Gomez-Baya Diego, Salinas-Perez Jose A, Sanchez-Lopez Alvaro, Paino-Quesada Susana, Mendoza-Berjano Ramon
Department of Social, Developmental and Educational Psychology, Universidad de Huelva, Huelva, Spain.
Department of Quantitative Methods, Universidad Loyola Andalucía, Seville, Spain.
Front Psychiatry. 2022 Apr 25;13:810326. doi: 10.3389/fpsyt.2022.810326. eCollection 2022.
Anxiety disorders are the most prevalent psychological disorders during emerging adulthood. Some consistent gender differences have been reported in anxiety with women suffering more anxiety than men, which has detrimental consequences in most life spheres in the youth and later life stages. The understanding of the development of anxiety in emerging adulthood requires a developmental perspective. The Developmental Assets Theory was postulated to describe the individual and the contextual resources which may foster positive youth development and mental health. The present study aims to analyze to what extent the gender differences in anxiety may be partly explained by gender differences in developmental assets. For this purpose, a cross-sectional study was conducted in which a sample of 1,044 youths (75.5% women; age range = 18-28; M age = 20.47, SD = 3.08) enrolled in 11 universities from different regions in Spain filled in self-report measures of developmental assets and anxiety symptoms. The participants completed an online survey with the scales, Developmental Assets Profile developed by the Search Institute (1) and Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7) (2). The results showed more anxiety in the female subsample (at both the symptoms and clinical levels). Some gender differences in developmental assets were also observed. A partial mediation model, based on regression analyses, indicated that gender differences in anxiety were partly explained by gender differences in developmental assets. Thus, higher anxiety in the women was partly due to lower scores in positive identity and higher scores in positive values. These results suggested the need to design programs to prevent anxiety with specific measures for women youth to nurture positive identity and promote strengths and coping skills that allow them to get the benefits of well-being derived from positive values, thus, preventing worry and stress overload, which may lead to anxiety.
焦虑症是成年初期最普遍的心理障碍。在焦虑方面已报告了一些一致的性别差异，女性比男性更容易焦虑，这在青年期和后期生活阶段的大多数生活领域都有不利影响。理解成年初期焦虑的发展需要一个发展的视角。发展资产理论被提出以描述可能促进青少年积极发展和心理健康的个人及情境资源。本研究旨在分析焦虑方面的性别差异在多大程度上可能部分由发展资产方面的性别差异所解释。为此，进行了一项横断面研究，来自西班牙不同地区11所大学的1044名青年（75.5%为女性；年龄范围 = 18 - 28岁；平均年龄 = 20.47岁，标准差 = 3.08）填写了发展资产和焦虑症状的自我报告测量量表。参与者完成了一项在线调查，其中包括由探索研究所开发的发展资产概况量表（1）和广泛性焦虑障碍 - 7量表（GAD - 7）（2）。结果显示女性子样本中的焦虑程度更高（在症状和临床水平上均如此）。在发展资产方面也观察到了一些性别差异。基于回归分析的部分中介模型表明，焦虑方面的性别差异部分由发展资产方面的性别差异所解释。因此，女性中较高的焦虑部分归因于积极身份认同得分较低以及积极价值观得分较高。这些结果表明需要设计预防焦虑的项目，采取针对青年女性的具体措施来培养积极身份认同，并促进优势和应对技能，使她们能够从积极价值观中获得幸福的益处，从而预防可能导致焦虑的担忧和压力过载。
