Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Dec 12;6(1):e6.
doi: 10.1192/bjo.2019.90.

Trajectories of depressive symptoms and adult educational and employment outcomes

José A López-López  1 , Alex S F Kwong  2 , Elizabeth Washbrook  3 , Rebecca M Pearson  4 , Kate Tilling  5 , Mina S Fazel  6 , Judi Kidger  7 , Gemma Hammerton  8
Affiliations

Trajectories of depressive symptoms and adult educational and employment outcomes

José A López-López et al. BJPsych Open. .

Abstract

Background: Depressive symptoms show different trajectories throughout childhood and adolescence that may have different consequences for adult outcomes.

Aims: To examine trajectories of childhood depressive symptoms and their association with education and employment outcomes in early adulthood.

Method: We estimated latent trajectory classes from participants with repeated measures of self-reported depressive symptoms between 11 and 24 years of age and examined their association with two distal outcomes: university degree and those not in employment, education or training at age 24.

Results: Our main analyses (n = 9399) yielded five heterogenous trajectories of depressive symptoms. The largest group found (70.5% of participants) had a stable trajectory of low depressive symptoms (stable-low). The other four groups had symptom profiles that reached full-threshold levels at different developmental stages and for different durations. We identified the following groups: childhood-limited (5.1% of participants) with full-threshold symptoms at ages 11-13; childhood-persistent (3.5%) with full-threshold symptoms at ages 13-24; adolescent onset (9.4%) with full-threshold symptoms at ages 17-19; and early-adult onset (11.6%) with full-threshold symptoms at ages 22-24. Relative to the majority 'stable-low' group, the other four groups all exhibited higher risks of one or both adult outcomes.

Conclusions: Accurate identification of depressive symptom trajectories requires data spanning the period from early adolescence to early adulthood. Consideration of changes in, as well as levels of, depressive symptoms could improve the targeting of preventative interventions in early-to-mid adolescence.

Keywords: Depressive disorders; education and training; epidemiology; statistical methodology.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of interest: None.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Five-class trajectory solution.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Gore FM, Bloem PJN, Patton GC, Ferguson J, Joseph V, Coffey C, et al. Global burden of disease in young people aged 10-24 years: a systematic analysis. Lancet 2011; 377: 2093–102. - PubMed
    1. Ferro MA, Gorter JW, Boyle MH. Trajectories of depressive symptoms in Canadian emerging adults. Am J Public Health 2015; 105: 2322–7. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Holsen I, Birkeland MS. Course, predictors, and outcomes of depressed mood in a cohort of Norwegian adolescents followed from age 13 into adulthood age 30. Emerg Adulthood 2017; 5: 3–15.
    1. Kwong ASF, Manley D, Timpson NJ, Pearson RM, Heron J, Sallis H, et al. Identifying critical points of trajectories of depressive symptoms from childhood to young adulthood. J Youth Adolesc 2019; 48: 815–27. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Shore L, Toumbourou JW, Lewis AJ, Kremer P. Review: Longitudinal trajectories of child and adolescent depressive symptoms and their predictors – a systematic review and meta-analysis. Child Adolesc Ment Health 2018; 23: 107–20. - PubMed