Network structure of depressive symptoms, school anxiety and perfectionism in Peruvian adolescents

Few studies have examined common patterns between perfectionist traits, depressive symptomatology and anxiety in adolescents. We analyzed these simultaneous associations and identified the most influential measures through network analysis. A total of 533 high school Peruvian students (48.97% female) participated from two educational institutions. Adapted Oros’ Perfectionism, Reynolds Depression Scale and a single item school anxiety measure for adolescents were used. Spinglass algorithm found a solution of three domains of perfectionism: self-demands, distress-worry and reactions to failure, as well as one cluster of depressive symptoms. When analyzing the interconnections between these dimensions, it was found that worry-distress perfectionism (WDP) and reactions to failure perfectionism (RFP) played a central role in activating other variables in the network. In particular, RFP had the strongest connection with depression, while WDP was related to school anxiety. On the other hand, self-demands perfectionism was the only dimension that showed a negative relationship with depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that perfectionist reactions focused on anticipating and responding to errors may share common patterns that should be addressed to reduce depression and school anxiety in adolescents.