The Interplay between Irritability and Ego-Resilience and their Links to Symptoms of Anxiety and Depression During Childhood
Anxiety and depression are among the disorders with highest prevalence during childhood. Previous research has substantiated that individual’s high irritability promotes the occurrence of associated symptoms while high ego-resilience protects against them. So far, little is known about how ego-resilience could engage with irritability for symptom development. We investigated interactional effects of irritability with ego-resilience on symptoms of anxiety and depression. Overall, 228 children from a combined clinical and nonclinical sample aged 7 to 18 years participated in a cross-sectional self-report survey. They reported on internalizing symptoms, ego-resilience, and irritability. A moderated hierarchical regression analysis showed that ego-resilience was negatively associated with symptoms of anxiety and depression, and that irritability was positively related to heightened symptom levels. Ego-resilience and irritability were overall stronger associated with symptoms of depression than anxiety. Irritability moderated the association between ego-resilience and depression such that effects of ego-resilience were stronger among highly irritable participants. Our results suggest that highly irritable children could benefit to a larger extent from ego-resilience capacities, possibly yielding a protective role of irritability for buffering internalizing symptoms. Our findings highlight differential psychopathological mechanisms that underlie depression and anxiety. They also pinpoint to a dynamic systems approach when assessing determinants of psychopathology which are traditionally interpreted as either risk-increasing or protective. Furthering research that considers irritability within environmental/biological sensitivity frameworks could help better understanding our findings.