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. (C) 2019 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.