Scientists identify depression and anxiety biomarker in youths

" - Scientists have discovered a cognitive biomarker - a biological indicator of a disease - for young adolescents who are at high risk of developing depression and anxiety. Their The test for the unique cognitive biomarker, which can be done on a computer, could be used as an inexpensive tool to screen adolescents for common emotional mental illnesses. As the cognitive biomarker may appear prior to the symptoms of depression and anxiety, early intervention (which has proven to be one of the most effective ways of combatting mental illness) could then be initiated. For the study, 15-18 year old participants underwent genetic testing and environmental assessment, an exercise which would currently be too expensive and take too long to use as a widespread method of screening. The adolescents were then given a computer test to gauge how they process emotional information. The test had the participants evaluate whether words were positive, negative or neutral (examples included 'joyful' for positive, 'failure' for negative, and 'range' for neutral). Those adolescents with a variation of one gene (the short form of the serotonin transporter) as well as exposure to intermittent family arguments for longer than six months and violence between parents before the age of six were shown to have marked difficulty in evaluating the emotion within the words, indicating an inability to process emotional information.