Date of Award

2025

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

MA in Psychology

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

William F Chaplin

Abstract

Anxiety and depression are the two most common internalizing disorders reported in children and adolescents. The comorbidity of the disorders often undermines efforts to effectively differentiate these disorders in terms of their response to therapy. In this research, we identified two symptoms that are specific to Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and three symptoms that are specific to Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) from the Youth Outcomes Questionnaire (YOQ) and created specific anxiety and depression “testlets” based on these symptoms.  We hypothesized that although the two types of symptoms would be correlated, that the GAD symptoms would respond more quickly to therapy than the MDD symptoms. We tested these hypotheses using longitudinal assessments of children undergoing psychotherapy from a sample of 79 children and 201 parents. At the beginning of therapy, the mean number of children's GAD symptoms was 1.709 for the child self-report and 1.403 for the parents' report.  This difference corresponded to an effect size (Cohens d = 0.304). For MDD the mean was 1.243 for the child self-report and 1.099 for the parents’ report. This difference corresponded to an effect size (Cohens d = 0.163). The correlation between GAD and MDD was 0.747 for children and 0.417 for parents. Using fixed effects regression, we found the average change in symptoms per week was 0.005 for GAD and -0.002 for MDD. We did not find a moderating effect of informant on change. Consistent with our hypothesis, anxiety symptoms exhibit a stronger decrease in severity with therapy than depression symptoms.

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