Background: Stressful events due to the coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) pandemic are likely to have profound effects on mental health, and validated methods for assessing these experiences and associations with psychopathology are needed. We developed the Pandemic Stress Questionnaire (PSQ) and tested its psychometric properties, characterized experiences in emerging adults, and examined associations with internalizing symptoms. Methods: Emerging adults (N = 450) completed the PSQ and measures of internalizing symptoms and perceived stress through an online platform in May 2020. One month later, 288 participants completed a follow-up questionnaire to assess reliability of the PSQ and longitudinal associations between stress and internalizing symptoms. Results: Results supported the validity/reliability of PSQ total scores and indicated that stressful events were highly prevalent in May, particularly among younger, female, and Black emerging adults. Symptoms of depression and anxiety were high overall, but decreased at the follow-up assessment. Pandemic-related stress was moderately associated with both depression and anxiety at each assessment, but baseline stress did not predict change in symptoms when controlling for baseline symptoms. Conclusions: Results provide empirical evidence that emerging adults are at high risk for depression and anxiety related to the psychosocial effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, and highlight specific types of experiences associated with greatest risk. Further, this study provides support for a questionnaire measure of experiences related to the COVID-19 pandemic that can be applied in future work to advance understanding of risk and resilience in response to stressful events.

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Background Suicidality in youth is a major public health problem and objective methods for identifying those at greatest risk are critically needed. Suicidality has been associated with alterations in reward‐related decision‐making, but the extent to which measures of reward responsiveness (RR) can differentiate youth with and without suicidality in clinical samples remains unclear. Methods We examined reliable and accessible neurophysiological (i.e., reward positivity [RewP] event‐related potential) and self‐report (Behavioral Activation System subscales) measures of RR in relation to active suicidality in 58 clinically depressed adolescents (14‐ to 18‐year‐olds). Results Logistic regression analysis indicated that active suicidality in depressed adolescents was associated with heightened RR at both the self‐report and neurophysiological levels. A relatively more positive RewP to win and a more negative RewP to loss uniquely predicted active suicidality beyond demographic, clinical, and self‐report measures. Conclusions Results support the utility of neurophysiological measures in differentiating clinically depressed adolescents with and without suicidality. Although depression is commonly characterized by reduced RR, depressed adolescents with active suicidality exhibited relatively enhanced neural responses to reward and loss feedback. Results highlight the need for consideration of heterogeneity in RR in depression and research on personalized depression treatment.

Background: Stressful events associated with the COVID-19 pandemic are likely to have significant effects on psychiatric symptoms, and well-validated methods for assessing psychosocial experiences related to the pandemic are needed. We developed the Pandemic Stress Questionnaire (PSQ) and tested its psychometric properties, characterized experiences in emerging adults, and examined associations with internalizing symptoms. Methods: Emerging adults (N=450) completed the PSQ and measures of internalizing symptoms and perceived stress through an online platform in May 2020. One month later, 288 participants completed a follow-up questionnaire to assess the stability of the PSQ and prospective associations between stress and internalizing symptoms. Results: Results supported the validity and stability of the PSQ and indicated that experiences of stress are highly prevalent, particularly among younger, female, and Black emerging adults. Pandemic-related stress was moderately associated with depression and anxiety at each assessment, but did not predict change in symptoms when controlling for baseline symptoms. Conclusions: The PSQ is a promising measure for assessing COVID-19 pandemic-related events in research and clinical practice. Results provide empirical support for the range of life disruptions as a result of the pandemic and highlight individual differences and experiences associated with the greatest risk for depression and anxiety.

The COVID-19 pandemic imposed profound effects on health and daily life, with widespread stress exposure and increases in psychiatric symptoms. Despite these challenges, pandemic research provides unique insights into individual differences in emotion and cognition that predict responses to stress, with general implications for understanding stress vulnerability. We examined predictors of responses to COVID-19-related stress in an online sample of 450 emerging adults recruited in May 2020 to complete questionnaires assessing baseline stress and psychiatric symptoms, rumination, cognitive reappraisal use and intolerance of uncertainty.Stress and symptoms were re-assessed 3 months later (N = 200). Greater pandemic-related stressful events were associated with increases in symptoms of depression, anxiety and alcohol use severity. Additionally, individual differences in emotional and cognitive styles emerged as longitudinal predictors of stress responses. Specifically, greater rumination predicted increased depression. Reduced cognitive reappraisal use interacted with stress to predict increases in alcohol use.An unexpected pattern emerged for intolerance of uncertainty, such that stress was associated with increases in depression for those high in intolerance of uncertainty but increases in alcohol use at relatively low levels of intolerance of uncertainty.These results highlight unique vulnerabilities that predict specific outcomes following stress exposure and offer potential prevention targets.

Earlier depression onsets are associated with more debilitating courses and poorer life quality, highlighting the importance of effective early intervention. Many youths fail to improve with evidence-based treatments for depression, likely due in part to heterogeneity within the disorder. Multi-method assessment of individual differences in positive and negative emotion processing could improve predictions of treatment outcomes. The current study examined self-report and neurophysiological measures of reward responsiveness and emotion regulation as predictors of response to cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Adolescents (14–18 years) with depression ( N = 70) completed monetary reward and emotion regulation tasks while electroencephalogram (EEG) was recorded, and self-report measures of reward responsiveness, emotion regulation, and depressive symptoms at intake. Adolescents then completed a 16-session group CBT program, with depressive symptoms and clinician-rated improvement assessed across treatment. Lower reward positivity amplitudes, reflecting reduced neural reward responsiveness, predicted lower depressive symptoms with treatment. Larger late positive potential residuals during reappraisal, potentially reflecting difficulty with emotion regulation, predicted greater clinician-rated improvement. Self-report measures were not significant predictors. Results support the clinical utility of EEG measures, with impairments in positive and negative emotion processing predicting greater change with interventions that target these processes. Supplementary Information The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10802-023-01054-z.

Adolescents of mothers with a history of depression are at two-to-five-fold increased risk for developing depression themselves. These adolescents may be especially vulnerable to depression during the COVID-19 pandemic. To better understand the complex vulnerability processes involved in the transmission of maternal depression risk to adolescent offspring in the context of the pandemic-related stress, we examined potential mediating and moderating factors that link maternal depression history and offspring depressive symptoms, including resting-state functional connectivity (rs-FC) and mothers’ depressive symptoms, in 85 adolescents during the pandemic. Adolescents’ pre-pandemic rs-FC between posterior and anterior cingulate cortex (PCC-ACC) moderated the association between maternal depression history and adolescents’ depressive symptoms during the pandemic, such that maternal depression history predicted adolescents’ symptoms only in youths with heightened pre-pandemic PCC-ACC rs-FC. Mothers’ depressive symptoms during pandemic mediated and moderated the link between maternal depression history and adolescents’ depressive symptoms; specifically, mothers with a history of depression had greater depressive symptoms during pandemic outbreak, which were, in turn, associated with offspring depressive symptoms. Additionally, maternal depression history predicted depressive symptoms in adolescents whose mothers had relatively lower depressive symptoms during the pandemic. Findings speak to the complex mediating and moderating processes involved in the transmission of maternal depression risk to adolescent offspring in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

To date, most longitudinal studies of adolescents' internalizing symptoms during the COVID-19 pandemic include few time points, limiting knowledge about the long-term course of adolescents' mental health during the pandemic. Moreover, examining intraindividual variability in symptoms, which may have important implications for adolescents' adjustment beyond mean or "typical" symptoms, requires multiple time points. We examined the course of internalizing symptoms in 271 Ontario adolescents (mean n = 193 across time points) during the first year of the pandemic (March 2020-April 2021) via mixed-effect location scale models, drawing upon established internalizing symptom risk factors as predictors of mean trends and intraindividual variability. Adolescents' internalizing symptoms were relatively stable and generally low over the first year of the pandemic, with severity peaking in February and April 2021. Girls showed more symptoms on average and greater intraindividual variability in symptoms. Parents' depressive symptoms predicted intraindividual variability in adolescents' anxious and depressive symptoms. Adolescents' symptoms were stable and generally below clinical cutoffs. However, female adolescents and those whose parents experienced more depressive symptoms were most vulnerable to the stress of the pandemic. Implications for intervention and prevention efforts are discussed. Public Significance StatementThis study investigated adolescents' symptoms of depression and anxiety over the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. Although most had low, stable symptoms, girls, on average, had greater symptoms than boys and also showed more variability in their symptoms. Adolescents' whose parents had more depressive symptoms also showed more variability in their symptoms.