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Associations between cognitive errors and mental health status in New Zealand adolescents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 November 2019

Tatiana Tairi Open the ORCID record for Tatiana Tairi [Opens in a new window]
Tatiana Tairi*
Affiliation:
School of Psychology, Massey University, Wellington, New Zealand
*
Corresponding author. Email: T.Tairi@massey.ac.nz
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Abstract

Background:

Cognitive models of psychopathology suggest that negatively biased thinking styles are involved in the development and maintenance of emotional disturbances.

Aims:

The present study examined the relationships between negative cognitive errors and indices of mental health status (i.e. anxiety and depression) in New Zealand adolescents.

Method:

A community sample of 490 youth aged 16–18 years completed an anonymous online survey consisting of the Children’s Negative Cognitive Error Questionnaire (CNCEQ), the Trait subscale of the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI-T) and the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale (CES-D).

Results:

Negative cognitive errors correlated positively with greater levels of anxious and depressive symptoms. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that overall cognitive error score was a strong predictor of adolescents’ self-reported anxious symptoms and, to a lesser extent, depressive symptoms. Moreover, cognitive errors significantly differentiated between adolescents with high scores from adolescents with low scores on both the anxiety (STAI-T) and the depression (CES-D) scales.

Conclusions:

These findings lend support to the generalizability of Beck’s cognitive theory to a New Zealand adolescent population and highlight the importance of focusing on prevention and early intervention programmes that directly target these faulty or biased ways of thinking in adolescents with anxious and/or depressive symptoms before meeting diagnostic criteria.

Keywords

anxietyadolescencecognitive errors/distortionsdepressionmental health
Type
Main
Information
Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapy , Volume 48 , Issue 3 , May 2020 , pp. 280 - 290
Copyright
© British Association for Behavioural and Cognitive Psychotherapies 2019

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