Depression and Anxiety Symptom Networks Across the Lifespan

Background: The relationship between anxiety and depressive symptoms is complex and may vary across the lifespan. Symptom network analyses offer a powerful tool to examine these interactions, but few studies have directly compared symptom networks in younger and older adults. Methods: We analysed data from the Cambridge Centre for Ageing and Neuroscience (Cam-CAN) study, including 786 participants aged 18 to 88, who reported at least subclinical levels of symptoms on the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Network analysis was employed to examine symptom communities, within- and between-community connectivity, and centrality measures across age groups. Results: The overall network structure, largely separating anxiety and depressive symptoms into two communities, remained stable across age groups. However, in older adults, there was a reduction in connectivity within the depression community, and a reduction in between-community connectivity for both the depression and anxiety communities. Moreover, while panic emerged as a consistently central symptom across both age groups, rumination and restlessness were the key bridge symptoms in young and older adults, respectively. Discussion: Our findings reveal both stable and dynamic aspects of depression and anxiety symptoms across the lifespan. Reduced within-community connectivity for depressive symptoms suggests greater heterogeneity in how depression manifests in older populations. The shift in bridging symptoms, from cognitive (rumination) in young adults to somatic (restlessness) in older adults, suggests subtle yet clinically important differences in how depression and anxiety are linked across the lifespan. Our results underscore the need for tailored, age-dependent treatment in depression and anxiety.