Transdiagnostic symptoms of psychopathology interact with changes in environmental uncertainty

Abstract

Abstract Uncertainty is a potential driver of poor mental health outcomes, and uncertainty is mounting across domains of daily life. It remains unclear how symptoms of anxiety and depression emerge in response to uncertainty in real-life contexts. The current study investigated how heightened environmental uncertainty interacts with intolerance of uncertainty (IU) to influence mental health symptoms. A total of 301 participants concurrently reported current symptoms of anxiety, depression and IU during higher environmental uncertainty ( t 2) and retrospectively recalled symptoms from a prior period of lower environmental uncertainty ( t 1). Cross-sectional and cross-lagged panel networks were used to identify influential contributors and examine associations across the two reported timepoints. Anxiety, depression and IU symptoms were elevated when environmental uncertainty was higher relative to when it was lower. Three symptom clusters were stable for the two timepoints, but worry became more central to the network at t 2. IU symptoms exhibited the highest autoregressive effects, indicating strong consistency between levels at t 1 and t 2. The item “inhibition of behaviour due to doubt” positively predicted both anxiety and anhedonia. These findings highlight the relevance of worry during periods of increased environmental uncertainty, the predictive value of predispositional IU, and the importance of behavioural inhibition as a potential target to alleviate internalising psychopathology.