Exploring Young Adulthood Psychopathology Networks Related to Depression Using Partial Correlation Network and Bayesian Network

Abstract To characterize young adulthood depression is complicated because it is entangled with a broad spectrum of symptoms as well as traumatic experiences during development. However, previous symptom network studies have focused on undirected transdiagnostic association among depression and anxiety symptoms. Our study investigated both undirected and directed connections among variables potentially associated with depression, such as anxiety, addiction, subjective distress caused by traumatic events, perceived emotional adversities, and support systems. Both the regularized partial correlation network analysis and Bayesian network analysis were applied to 579 subjects screened for depression. Anxiety-related symptoms played a role as a hub node in the partial correlation network and Bayesian network. The vulnerability analysis of the partial correlation network showed that verbal abuse, social anxiety, concentration problems, and suicidal ideation had the strongest influence on changes in the network’s topology. In the Bayesian network analysis, loss of interest, depressed mood, and parental verbal abuse were located as parent nodes in the directed acyclic graph. In the aspect of disease networks, more attention should be paid to certain variables encompassing various domains as well as depressive symptoms in young adults’ mental health management.