Social connection and mental health in girls: A prospective longitudinal study across adolescence

摘要 内化问题是常见的，有害的，在青春期女孩中越来越多-创造一个 公共卫生必须确定行为和生物机制和/或风险指标。社会 众所周知，联系、排斥和孤独会影响内化的出现和复发。 症状和障碍的青春期女孩，最近的努力已经开始集中在具体的作用， 在这个过程中的亲密关系。虽然亲密友谊的质量通常可以缓冲风险， 精神障碍，在青春期女孩中，亲密友谊的一些支持性特征也可能增加 抑郁焦虑和自残考虑这些过程的一个重要的新背景是使用 数字技术，特别是社交媒体，因为青少年广泛使用这些方法来连接 朋友和同伴因此，必须了解日常在线和离线的动态 社会联系、社会排斥和孤独的经历影响青春期女孩的心理健康。在 此外，很明显，青春期发育强烈影响少女的风险轨迹，可能通过 伴随的神经和社会变化。对社会排斥的神经反应被广泛认为是不同的， 青少年抑郁，焦虑，自我伤害;但我们对如何积极方面知之甚少， 社会联系可能会缓冲这些个体差异。青春期女孩的转变（TAG）研究， 于2015年推出（R 01 MH 107418），旨在对 在青春期早期到中期的生物和社会变化之间的联系，以揭示 这些相互关联的变化与出现一系列心理健康风险的方式 与女孩青春期发育有关的问题。我们招募了N=174名女孩（年龄 10.0-13.0岁）进行纵向研究，每18个月收集3波数据，包括2 每一波的实验室检查。TAG研究的第一阶段旨在解决以下问题 青春期是否通过其对神经、自我和社会认知发展的影响来影响心理健康）。我们 建议每隔两个18个月收集更多的数据，使队列达到16-19岁 年龄。至关重要的是，我们将纳入一个扩大的多层次强调社会联系，包括两个 建立的问卷和神经成像任务，以及创新的新方法，利用中期到中期， 青少年使用智能手机的情况。这有一个额外的好处，即扩展项目以检查 青少年早中期生理和心理社会变化对中晚期青少年社会行为影响 联系和心理健康--这两个过程的关键阶段。我们假设社交 在青春期中后期的联系不仅可以预测当前和不久的将来的心理健康， 但也是一系列发展和风险过程的一部分，这些过程至少部分受到以下因素的驱动： 早期的生理和心理变化。

ABSTRACT Internalizing problems are common, harmful, and increasing amongst adolescent girls -- creating a public health imperative to identify behavioral and biological mechanisms and/or indicators of risk. Social connection, exclusion, and loneliness are well known to affect emergence and recurrence of internalizing symptoms and disorders in adolescent girls, and recent efforts have begun to focus on the specific role of close friendships in these processes. While the quality of close friendships often buffers against risks for mental disorders, in adolescent girls some supportive features of close friendships may also increase risk for depression, anxiety, and self-harm. One important new context in which to consider these processes is the use of digital technology, especially social media, as adolescents extensively use these methods to connect with friends and peers. It is therefore essential to understand how the dynamics of daily online and offline experiences of social connection, social exclusion, and loneliness impact adolescent girls’ mental health. In addition, it is also clear that pubertal development strongly impacts risk trajectories in adolescent girls, likely via concomitant neural and social changes. Neural responses to social exclusion are widely understood to differ in adolescents with depression, anxiety, and self-harm; yet we know very little about how positive aspects of social connection might buffer these individual differences. The Transitions in Adolescent Girls (TAG) study, launched in 2015 (R01 MH107418), was designed to conduct a comprehensive multilevel investigation of the connections between biological and social changes during early-to-mid adolescence, in order to reveal the ways in which these interconnected changes relate to risk for the emergence of a range of mental health problems associated with pubertal development in girls. We enrolled a community sample of N=174 girls (ages 10.0-13.0 years) into a longitudinal study, with 3 waves of data collected every 18 months, including 2 laboratory visits at each wave. The first phase of the TAG study was designed to address the question of whether puberty influences mental health via its impact on neural, self, and social cognitive development). We propose to collect additional waves of data at two more 18-month intervals, bringing the cohort to 16-19 years of age. Critically, we will incorporate an expanded multilevel emphasis on social connection, including both established questionnaires and neuroimaging tasks as well as innovative new methods that leverage mid-to- late adolescents’ use of smartphones. This has the added benefit of extending the project to examine the impact of early-to-mid adolescent biological and psychosocial changes on mid-to-late adolescent social connection and mental health -- a key phase of life for both of these processes. We hypothesize that social connection during mid-to-late adolescence is not only predictive of concurrent and near-future mental health, but is also part of a cascading series of developmental and risk processes that are at least in part driven by earlier biological and psychosocial changes.