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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

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Beyond internalizing distress: somatic complaints in youth as a developmentally sensitive indicator of multidimensional psychological vulnerability

BEYOND INTERNALIZING DISTRESS: SOMATIC COMPLAINTS AS DEVELOPMENTALLY SENSITIVE INDICATORS OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL PSYCHOLOGICAL VULNERABILITY IN YOUTH

Across three separate youth samples, somatic complaints were positively associated with all seven psychological symptom dimensions, with the strength of these associations varying by age and symptom domain.

The aim was to examine how associations between caregiver-reported somatic complaints and seven psychological symptom dimensions vary across development in three different youth samples. The samples comprised a Chinese national community sample aged 8 to 16 years (n=62,663), a Chinese outpatient clinical sample aged 8 to 16 years (n=3,505), and the longitudinal ABCD cohort aged 9 to 15 years (n=43,359 repeated observations). The outcome variable was CBCL somatic complaints; the predictors were anxiety problems, depressive withdrawal, social problems, thought problems, attention deficits, rule-breaking behavior, and aggressive behavior. Time-varying effect models (TVEM) were used for the analysis, alongside sex-stratified models, analyses of high-risk somatic complaints, and diagnosis-adjusted sensitivity analyses. Across all three samples, somatic complaints were positively associated with all seven symptom dimensions; the association with anxiety problems was stable across development, while the association with thought problems was consistently strong. Associations with social problems, attention deficits, rule-breaking behavior, and aggressive behavior strengthened during early and middle adolescence; social problems reached a plateau earlier, whereas rule-breaking behavior peaked later. Depressive withdrawal showed a sample-dependent pattern, increasing with age in the two Chinese samples but declining slightly in the ABCD cohort, with a stronger association in the clinical sample than in the ABCD cohort. Although the associations were significant in both boys and girls, some adolescent associations were more pronounced in girls; the findings also persisted in analyses of high-risk somatic complaints and after adjustment for diagnoses assessed using the MINI-KID in Sichuan and the K-SADS COMP in the ABCD cohort. The authors emphasize that recurrent somatic complaints could serve as an accessible early warning sign in school, community, and pediatric settings.

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