Troubled Hearts: Association Between Heart Rate Variability and Depressive Symptoms in Healthy Children
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Troubled Hearts: Association Between Heart Rate Variability and Depressive Symptoms in Healthy Children Dathan C. Gleichmann1 · Isabel Solis1 · Jacqueline R. Janowich1 · Yu‑Ping Wang3 · Vince D. Calhoun1,2 · Tony W. Wilson4 · Julia M. Stephen1 Accepted: 10 September 2020 © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Heart rate variability (HRV) captures the change in timing of consecutive heart beats and is reduced in individuals with depression and anxiety. The present study investigated whether typically-developing children without clinically recognized signs of depression or anxiety showed a relationship between HRV and depressive or anxiety symptoms. Children aged 9–14 years (N = 104) provided three minutes of cardiac signal during eyes closed rest and eyes open rest. The association between high frequency HRV, low frequency HRV, root mean square of the successive differences (RMSSD), and pNN20 versus depressive symptoms (NIH Toolbox and Child Behavior Checklist) was investigated. Results partially confirm our hypothesis, with pNN20 positively correlated with the self-reported depression measure of loneliness while controlling for age, sex, social status, and physical activity. The association was stronger in male participants. However, there is no consensus in the literature about which HRV measures are associated with depressive symptoms in healthy children. Additional studies are needed which reliably account for variables that influence HRV to establish whether certain HRV measures can be used as an early marker for depression risk in children. Keywords Heart rate variability · Healthy children · Depression · Loneliness · pNN20 · RMSSD
Introduction Depression, left undiagnosed and untreated in adolescents, can lead to tragic results. In 2017, the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (Kann et al. 2018) reported that over the previous 12 months, 22.1% of high school females and 11.9% of high school males had considered suicide. From that same report, 9.3% of females and 5.1% of males attempted suicide. With suicide being the second leading cause of death in people 10–24 years (Heron 2018), it is imperative an objective, reliable measure of depression is
* Julia M. Stephen [email protected] 1
The Mind Research Network, 1101 Yale Blvd NE, Albuquerque, NM 87106, USA
2
University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131, USA
3
Tulane University, 6823 St. Charles Ave, New Orleans, LA 70118, USA
4
University of Nebraska Medical Center, S 42nd St. & Emile St, Omaha, NE 68198, USA
discovered. As suicide rates across the country continue to increase (Stone et al. 2018), relying on self-report or waiting for children to speak up or act out is no longer tenable. The primary cause of suicidality is clinical depression. Depression is prevalent in children, with 12.8% of adolescents between the ages of 12–17 diagnosed (Ahrnsbrak 2017). Children with depression experience feelings of hopelessness, depressed mood, fatigue, and anhedonia (American Psychiatric Association 201
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