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Disentangling trait, occasion-specific, and accumulated situational effects of psychological distress in adulthood: evidence from the 1958 and 1970 British birth cohorts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2020

B. S. Scarpato ,
W. Swardfager ,
M. Eid ,
G.B. Ploubidis  and
H. Cogo-Moreira Open the ORCID record for H. Cogo-Moreira [Opens in a new window]
B. S. Scarpato
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Sao Paulo, Brazil
W. Swardfager
Affiliation:
Department of Pharmacology & Toxicology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada Hurvitz Brain Sciences Program, Sunnybrook Research Institute, Toronto, Canada
M. Eid
Affiliation:
Department of Educational Science and Psychology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany
G.B. Ploubidis
Affiliation:
Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
H. Cogo-Moreira*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychiatry, Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP), Sao Paulo, Brazil Centre for Longitudinal Studies, UCL Institute of Education, University College London, London, UK
*
Author for correspondence: H. Cogo-Moreira, E-mail: hugocogobr@gmail.com
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Abstract

Background

The trajectories of psychological distress differ between individuals, but these differences can be difficult to understand because the measures contain both consistent and situational features; however, in longitudinal studies these sources of information can be disentangled. In addition to occasion-specific features, interindividual differences can be decomposed into two sources of information: trait and carry-over effects between neighboring occasions that are not related to the trait (i.e. accumulated situational effects).

Methods

To disentangle these three sources of variance throughout adulthood, the consistency (trait and accumulated situational effects) and occasion specificity of nine indicators of psychological distress from the Malaise Inventory were examined in two birth cohorts, the 1958 National Child Development Study (NCDS58), and the 1970 British Cohort Study (BCS70).

Results

The scale was administered at ages 23, 33, 42, and 50 in NCDS58 (n = 7147), and at ages 26, 30, 34, and 42 in BCS70 (n = 6859). For each psychological symptom, more variance was consistent than occasion-specific. The majority of the consistency was due to trait variance as opposed to accumulated situational effects, indicating that an individual predisposed to be distressed at the beginning of the study remained more likely to be distressed over the whole period. Symptoms of rage were notably more consistent among males than females in both cohorts (78.1% and 81.3% variance explained by trait in NCDS58 and BCS70, respectively), and among females in the NCDS58 (69%).

Conclusions

Symptoms of psychological distress exhibited high stability throughout adulthood, especially among men, due mostly to interindividual trait differences.

Keywords

Autoregressive effectcohort studydepressive symptomslatent state-trait modelpsychological distress
Type
Original Article
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 51 , Issue 5 , April 2021 , pp. 804 - 814
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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