(PS11-90) Psychosocial Impairment Associated with Irritability in Young Adult College Students

Irritability is a persistent mood state that is described as a “persistently angry, grumpy or grouchy mood, i.e., touchy or easily annoyed, angry or resentful” (Carlson & Klein, 2018). Because it is associated with a wide range of disorders, irritability is considered to be a transdiagnostic feature of psychopathology. The Affective Reactivity Index (ARI) was developed to assess chronic irritability. The ARI contains 6 items that measure irritable symptoms and a 7^th item that assesses impairment due to irritability. Psychometric evaluations of the ARI have been promising, but only a few studies have used this measure with adults. The objective of this study is to examine how well the ARI Impairment item identifies different domains of impairment in college students.

The sample consisted of 1642 college students recruited from 3 universities in Massachusetts. Mean age was 19.9 years. Gender was 67% female, 30% male, and 2% other and 1% transgender. Ethnicity was 76% White, 12% Asian American, 9% Latino, 3% Black.

Measures used were the ARI Impairment Due to Irritability item and a 16-item measure of impairment developed by Johnston et al. (2018) to assess impairment associated with ODD in college students. Three items on the ODD impairment scale comprised the Difficulty Making/Keeping Friends domain, 3 items comprised the Online Antagonistic Behavior domain, and 2 items comprised the Conflict With Authority domain.

The ARI Impairment item (Overall, my irritability causes me problems) was used to identify 3 groups: Not True (N = 1008), Somewhat True (N = 487), Certainly True (N = 147). One-way ANOVAs were conducted to examine differences among these groups. Effect sizes (Partial Eta²; h²) are reported for these analyses. Medium effect sizes were found for the following domains: Difficulty Making/Keeping Friends (h² = .08); Online Antagonistic Behavior (h² = .07); Arguing With/Defying Parents (h² = .07); Consider Dropping Out of College (h² = .06). All 3 groups differed from one another on these domains.

Small effect sizes were found for the following: ); Others Say You’re Easy To Get Along With (h² = .05); Using Alcohol/Drugs to Cope with Negative Emotions (h² = .04 Difficulty Maintaining Romantic Relationships (h² = .03); Trouble Admitting You are Wrong (h² = .03), Conflict with Authority (h² = .01).

 
Overall, individuals reporting my irritability causes me problems reported greater social/ interpersonal difficulties making and keeping friends and maintaining romantic relationships. These individuals were more likely to argue with parents and engage in antagonistic online behavior. Moreover, they more often used substances to cope with negative emotions and were more likely to consider dropping out of college. These results indicate that the ARI Impairment Due to Irritability item identifies adults who experience a range of psychosocial difficulties. Although originally developed to assess irritability in children and adolescents, present findings indicate that this brief measure shows promise for research and clinical use with adults. Future work should examine the psychometric characteristics of the 6-item ARI, as well as issues of convergent validity, such as whether elevated irritability is associated with depression and anxiety for adults.