MONDAY, July 29, 2002 (HealthDayNews) -- Anxiety-ridden teenagers get angry, sad and tired more frequently. They're also more likely to overeat and smoke.
Unfortunately, the problem may be more prevalent than previously thought, suggests a new study that tracked the teens' feelings in real time.
While adolescent angst is hardly a new phenomenon, the rates of teenagers' anxiety are unexpectedly high, says a report in a recent issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
In a study of 150 ninth graders, researchers from the University of California, Irvine, and the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), used hand-held computer diaries to measure and analyze their moods and behavior.
The investigators say the innovative method contributed to their findings.
"The electronic journals gave us greater insight into the teenage mind than the traditional questionnaire, as we were able to look at patterns and situations that couldn't be tapped very accurately before," says researcher and UCLA psychology professor Barbara Henker.
Because the students could log "as they happened" accounts of their emotions, they were more candid, Henker says. "If they felt extremely upset and we caught them in that moment, they told us that. Whereas when we asked them with the traditional pencil and paper method, 'Have you been extremely upset today?' they said 'No.'"
For two four-day intervals, the adolescents recorded their moods, activities and social settings, as well as their food, tobacco and alcohol intake in journals equipped with a specific software program.
The computers beeped them every 30 minutes, and questions appeared on screen. The first few asked things like where they were, who they were with, and what they were doing. Others were mood-related. Each question offered a range of answers. So the response to "How anxious are you?" for example, could be anything from "slightly nervous" to "highly agitated."
Their responses disappeared after they'd keyed them in -- a feature that Henker says fostered honesty and spontaneity.
"They weren't worrying about parents prying, nor could they look back and check what they'd said before," she says.
The researchers used the journal entries to classify the students into low-, middle-, or high-anxiety groups and examined when each one experienced anxiety, where and with whom.
On average, the participants reported being apprehensive in about 45 percent of their logs.
The ones who felt the most anxious tended to spend more time alone, but were less anxious when they were with their friends. The high-anxiety adolescents were seven times more likely than their less anxious peers to recount feelings of anger, and 11 times more likely to report sadness.
Moderate- and high-anxiety teens were two to three times more likely to smoke, and between 70 and 80 percent were more likely to drink alcohol and experience urges to eat.
Contrary to previous studies that have found girls more anxious than boys, this investigation revealed no gender differences.
Katharina Manassis, a psychiatrist and director of the anxiety disorders program at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto, says the study confirms what many in the profession have long suspected.
"Many of us have always thought that when people are anxious, particularly in their teens, they're prone to using maladaptive ways of dealing with that, like overeating, drinking or smoking," she says.
However, Henker cautions that although the results reveal anxiety and negative behaviors often occur simultaneously, it's difficult to say which comes first. "My best guess is sometimes anxiety leads kids to smoke or overeat, and sometimes smoking or overeating makes kids anxious," she says.
While the researchers suggest their findings may deter adolescents from picking up harmful habits, Manassis believes merely pointing out the relationship between anxiety and teenagers' destructive practices will have little effect on their actions.
"But if someone's there to help the adolescent identify the situations where they get anxious and to say, 'Hey, this is one situation where you said you get very anxious, so instead of picking up a cigarette or eating those doughnuts, what else could you be doing now?' That would be helpful," she says.
What To Do
For more on helping teenagers with anxiety and other mental health problems, try the Center for Mental Health Services or the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.
