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Research, media sources, and polls have identified negative effects associated with presidential elections. The aim of this research was to investigate associations between US presidential election...

This study uses novel approaches to examine genetic and environmental influences shared between childhood behavioral inhibition (BI) and symptoms of preadolescent anxiety disorders. Three hundred and fifty-two twin pairs aged 9–13 and their mothers completed questionnaires about BI and anxiety symptoms. Biometrical twin modeling, including a direction-of-causation design, investigated genetic and environmental risk factors shared between BI and social, generalized, panic and separation anxiety. Social anxiety shared the greatest proportion of genetic (20%) and environmental (16%) variance with BI with tentative evidence for causality. Etiological factors underlying BI explained little of the risk associated with the other anxiety domains. Findings further clarify etiologic pathways between BI and anxiety disorder domains in children.

OBJECTIVE: Childhood irritability exhibits significant theoretical and empirical associations with depression and anxiety syndromes. The current study used the twin design to parse genetic and environmental contributions to these relationships. METHOD: Children aged 9–14 from 374 twin pairs were assessed for irritability and symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, panic, social phobia, and separation anxiety using dimensional self-report instruments. Multivariate structural equation modeling decomposed the correlations between these syndromes into genetic and environmental components to examine shared and specific risk domains. RESULTS: Irritability had significant associations with each internalizing symptom domain. Genetic contributions to irritability are moderately correlated with genetic risk for symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety, and separation anxiety with weaker overlap with the other anxiety syndromes. Familial and specific environmental risk factors explained covariation among syndromes and indicated potential syndrome-specific risk. CONCLUSIONS: There is substantial overlap among the genetic and environmental factors that influence individual differences in irritability and those that increase liability for depression and anxiety symptoms in children. These findings deepen the current understanding of childhood internalizing risk factors and provide important implications for syndrome prediction and susceptibility gene discovery efforts.

Despite growing evidence that a greater number of students are seeking counseling in college and university counseling centers throughout the United States, there is a dearth of empirical information about (a) the presenting concerns for which students seek treatment and (b) how these concerns differ according to client demographic factors. The purpose of this descriptive and exploratory study was to explore how counseling center clinicians categorize client presenting concerns, and how these concerns vary according to client demographics. Given the importance of client suicide within the field of college counseling, the frequency of suicidality as an identified presenting concern was also explored. A sample of 1,308 clinicians from 84 counseling centers rated the presenting concerns of 53,194 clients using the Clinician Index of Client Concerns (CLICC) after an initial consultation. Results of descriptive and nonparametric analyses indicated that the most prevalent concerns were anxiety, depression, stress, family, and academic performance, and that clients who belong to different demographic groups frequently present to counseling with broadly similar types of concerns. Furthermore, suicidality represented an area of concern for 8.4% of all clients, and it ranked 20 of 44 as a clinician-rated concern. Comparable rates emerged across the range of client demographic groups examined, although rates were notably higher for a handful of groups. The findings offer one of the largest and most generalizable descriptions of why college students seek counseling services, as determined by clinicians' evaluations of presenting concerns. Implications for research and clinical applications of the findings are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record

Background Internalizing disorders (IDs), consisting of the syndromes of anxiety and depression, are common, debilitating conditions often having onsets in adolescence. Scientists have developed dimensional self-report instruments that assess putative negative valence system (NVS) trait-like constructs as complimentary phenotypes to clinical symptoms. These include various measures that index temperamental predispositions to IDs and correlate with neural substrates of fear, anxiety, and affective regulation. This study sought to elucidate the overarching structure of putative NVS traits and their relationship to early manifestations of ID symptomatology. Methods The sample consisted of 768 juvenile twin subjects ages 9–13. Together with ID symptoms, extant validated instruments were chosen to assess a broad spectrum of NVS traits: anxiety sensitivity, irritability, fearfulness, behavioral activation and inhibition, and neuroticism and extraversion. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses (EFA/CFA) were used to investigate the latent structure of the associations among these different constructs and ID symptoms. Bifactor modeling in addition to standard correlated-factor analytic approaches were applied. Results Factor analyses produced a primary tripartite solution comprising anxiety/fear, dysphoria, and positive affect among all these measures. Competing DSM-like correlated factors and an RDoC-like NVS bifactor structure provided similar fit to these data. Conclusions Our findings support the conceptual organization of a tripartite latent internalizing domain in developing children. This structure includes both clinical symptoms and a variety of self-report dimensional traits currently in use by investigators. These various constructs are, therefore, most informatively investigated using an inclusive, integrated approach.

Fear and anxiety are conceptualized as responses to acute or potential threat, respectively. Adult twin studies found substantial interplay between genetic and environmental factors influencing fear disorders (phobias) and anxiety disorders. Research in children, however, has largely examined these factors independently. Thus, there exists a substantial knowledge gap regarding the underlying etiologic structure of these closely-related constructs during development. Symptom counts for five fear (criticism, the unknown, death, animal, medical) and four anxiety (generalized, panic, separation, social) dimensions were obtained for 373 twin pairs ages 9-14. Multivariate twin modeling was performed to elucidate the genetic and environmental influences distributed amongst these dimensions. The best fitting model contained one genetic, two familial environmental, and two unique environmental factors shared between fear and anxiety symptoms plus dimension-specific genetic and unique environmental factors. Although several environmental factors were shared between fear and anxiety dimensions, one latent factor accounted for genetic influences across both domains. While adult studies find somewhat distinct etiological differences between anxiety and phobic disorders, the current results suggest that their relative genetic and environmental influences are not as clearly demarcated in children. These etiological distinctions are more nuanced, likely contributing to the highly diffuse symptom patterns seen during development.

Objective Hypersensitivity to carbon dioxide (CO 2 )-enriched air may be a promising risk marker for anxiety disorders. Among adult and adolescent samples, heterogeneity in distress response to the CO 2 challenge task indexes three underlying classes of individuals, which distinguish between sustained and acute threat response as markers for internalizing disorders, broadly, and anxiety disorders, specifically. The present study examines latent classes in children's response to the CO 2 challenge task to clarify the association of CO 2 hypersensitivity with anxiety and internalizing symptomatology in childhood. Method Healthy children from a community twin sample (N = 538; 9-13 years) rated anxious distress every 2 minutes while breathing air enriched to 7.5% CO 2 for 8 minutes. Latent growth mixture modeling evaluated potential classes of individuals with characteristic trajectories of distress during the task to clarify the association with internalizing disorder symptoms and related traits (e.g., anxiety sensitivity, irritability). Results While all participants reported increased distress during the task, inter-individual heterogeneity in distress indexed three underlying classes: a consistently low class ("low"), a consistently high class ("high"), and participants who demonstrated markedly increased acute distress ("acute"). Compared to the low class, the high class reported greater internalizing psychopathology, whereas membership in the acute class was associated with experiencing a panic-like event during the task. Conclusion As in older individuals, three distinct trajectories emerged to capture inter-individual heterogeneity in children's distress during the CO 2 challenge task. These classes were distinguished by clinical validators that reinforce the association of CO 2 hypersensitivity and internalizing disorder phenotypes in children.

The Twin Study of Negative Valence Emotional Constructs is a multi-site study designed to examine the relationship between a broad selection of potential measures designed to assess putative endophenotypes for negative valence systems (NVS) and early symptoms of internalizing disorders (IDs). In this article, we describe the sample characteristics, data collection protocols, and measures used. Pre-adolescent Caucasian twin pairs were recruited through the Mid-Atlantic Twin Registry; data collection began in February of 2013. Enrolled twins completed various dimensional self-report measures along with cognitive, emotional, and psychophysiological tasks designed to assess NVS function. Parents also completed surveys about their twins and themselves. In addition, a subset of the twins also participated in a neuroimaging protocols. Data collection is in the final stages, and preliminary analyses are underway. The findings will potentially expand our understanding of the mechanisms by which genetic and environmental factors contribute to individual differences in NVS phenotypes and provide new insights into underlying risk factors for IDs.