Early fears linked to future anxiety, depression: Study

Early risk factors linked to children’s temperament and a neural process that could foretell whether an individual might develop depression and anxiety in adolescence and early adulthood have been identified during a recent imaging study led by the researchers. The study tracked a cohort of 165 individuals from 4 months old, between 1989 and 1993. Researcher found that people who are more inhibited in early childhood and who also don't respond typically to potential rewards as adolescents are vulnerable to developing depression later in life, more so than anxiety. As young children, the subjects were categorized as either inhibited or uninhibited. As adolescents, they underwent functional MRIs while completing a task to measure their brains reaction in anticipating rewards in this case, trying to win money. The researchers found that the association between inhibition at 14 to 24 months of age and worsening depressive symptoms from ages 15 to 26 was present only among those who also showed blunted activity in the ventral striatum as adolescents. “We found that behavioural inhibition was related to worsening depressive symptoms into adulthood. This supports the assertion that this temperament shows a stronger relation to developing anxiety in adolescence, but in adulthood it is tied more strongly to depression.”