2 - (SYM 60) Assessing Relinquishment of Positivity as a Central Symptom Bridging Anxiety and Depression

Anxiety and depression are often comorbid and chronic disorders, and relinquishment of positivity may link these two disorders. Indeed, previous research indicates that enjoyability relinquishment is a moderator of anxiety and depression, such that only anxious individuals who also endorsed relinquishing positivity were also depressed. In the current study, we thus sought to extend those findings by conducting a network analysis with self-report measures of anxiety, depression, activity avoidance, and perceived enjoyability of avoided activities. We hypothesized that relinquishment of positivity would emerge as a central bridge symptom between anxiety and depressive symptoms. We pre-registered the hypotheses prior to analyses and included 104 participants (M_age = 31.54, SD_age = 9.47; 63% females; 34% identified as a race other than White; 27% identified as a nationality other than American) in our analyses (https://aspredicted.org/PLK_64W). Anxiety and depressive symptoms were measured with the Beck Anxiety Inventory and the Beck Depression Inventory-II, respectively. Activity avoidance and perceived enjoyability were assessed via single items. All analyses were conducted using R. We used the goldbricker function in the networktools package to identify nodes that were redundant with each other, as evidenced by them having high correlations (r > .50) and fewer than 25% of connections with other nodes that were statistically different. Redundant nodes were combined with the reduce_net function in the networktools package. We then used the estimateNetwork function in the bootnet package to estimate the two networks. Lastly, we applied the bridge function in the networktools package to investigate bridge symptoms in each network. Relinquishment of enjoyability as well as avoidance of enjoyability were found to bridge the two symptom clusters of anxiety and depression together in networks 1 and 2, respectively. Additionally, an anhedonia circuit was uncovered in both networks in which loss of interest/worthlessness, loss of energy, and loss of pleasure/pessimism connected to anxiety through relinquishment (network 1) or avoidance (network 2). Our findings suggest that both relinquishment of enjoyability as well as avoidance of enjoyability could be potential pathways explaining the development and maintenance of anxiety and depression, and should be properly targeted in treatment.