Trait anhedonia is a transdiagnostic correlate of internalizing problems during adolescence

Developmental research documents that anhedonia, or diminished interest in usual activities, is associated with a diverse array of emotional problems in childhood and adolescence. Meanwhile, official nosologies desginate anhedonia as a more specific characteristic of major depressive disorder. Using a quantitative model of the internalizing domain, we compared the strength of transdiagnostic versus diagnosis-specific pathways from anhedonia to major depression (and other internalizing conditions) during adolescence. We recruited 241 youth ages 14–17 who completed semistructured interviews of anxiety and depressive disorders, as well as several self-report surveys of trait anhedonia and neuroticism. Confirmatory factor analysis of diagnostic correlations revealed good fit for a unidimensional model of the 10 internalizing conditions we assessed. This overarching internalizing dimension was statistically significantly correlated with trait anhedonia (r = 0.17) and neuroticism (r = 0.59). In contrast, anhedonia was virtually unrelated to major depression (r = −0.02), net the internalizing dimension. Thus, in this sample, the connection between anhedonia and major depression was explained by a transdiagnostic dimension presumed to underlie all internalizing problems. Compared to neuroticism, however, anhedonia had a more limited association with internalizing, consistent with established personality models of anxiety and depression. We conclude that these data are consistent with conceptualizing anhedonia predominantly as a transdiagnostic correlate of internalizing conditions, rather than a specific marker of major depression, in developmental psychopathology research and clinical interventions for young people.     

HiTOP thought disorder,DSM-5 psychoticism,and five factor model openness

HiTOP internalizing, detachment, antagonistic externalizing, and disinhibited externalizing align comfortably with respective domains of the Five-Factor Model (FFM) of general personality. The alignment of HiTOP thought disorder and DSM-5 Section III psychoticism with FFM openness though has been disputed, with the existing research obtaining weak and/or inconsistent results. The purpose of the current paper is to discuss possible reasons for this problematic alignment. The strength of the relationship is hindered in part because it is an alignment of a largely adaptive domain of personality with an entirely maladaptive domain (whereas this is not the case for the other four HiTOP-FFM alignments). The strength of the relationship is also affected by how both openness and psychoticism have been conceptualized and/or assessed.