Developmental dynamics of symptoms of emotional problems in childhood and adolescence: A longitudinal network analysis

Abstract Background Epidemiological studies document increasing incident rates of mental disorders across childhood and adolescence, with mood and anxiety disorders particularly increasing among adolescent females. Research also indicates that these emotional problems have become more prevalent in recent decades. Yet, there is still a lack of understanding of the interrelated development of distinct emotional symptoms from childhood to adolescence. Methods Here, we investigate and compare symptom dynamics in males and females. To accomplish this, we leveraged longitudinal data from the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children study ( N = 11,120, 50.1% males at baseline). We used five items ( worries , unhappy , nervous , fearful , somatic complaints ) derived from the parent‐reported Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire emotional problems scale, measured at up to seven timepoints (mean age = 9.52, range = 4.0–18.3 years old). We estimated a panel Graphical Vector Autoregressive network model (GVAR) and statistically compared the networks of males and females. Results The temporal network revealed largely reciprocal associations among symptoms, with the strongest edges between fearful–nervous and unhappy–worries ( β = 0.04–0.06). The contemporaneous and between‐person networks showed similar structures, although the between‐person network exhibited fewer but stronger associations, reflecting more stable individual differences. Somatic complaints were weakly connected in the temporal network but more strongly associated in contemporaneous and between‐person networks. Network invariance testing indicated no significant sex differences in average network structure. Conclusion The study delineates the developmental dynamics of emotional symptoms across childhood and adolescence, highlighting bidirectional influences between core symptoms of depression and anxiety, but did not find support for sex differences in their developmental interrelatedness.