Date of Completion

Spring 4-1-2026

Thesis Advisor(s)

Jonas G. Miller

Honors Major

Individualized Major

Disciplines

Developmental Psychology

Abstract

The overall well-being of adolescents is dependent on a variety of factors during development, including both mental and physical health. Mental health, or psychopathology, which includes internalizing and externalizing problems, represents a common and persistent concern among youth. Physical pain is another important aspect of adolescent well-being. Although prior research has examined associations between mental health and pain, less is known about how these relationships unfold over time, and few studies have considered the role of multilevel environmental factors. This honors thesis explores the predictability and bidirectionality of mental health and chronic pain in developing adolescents, and tests associations of mental health and chronic pain with overall environmental risk as modeled by an exposome factor. I conducted analyses using the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study (ABCD), a longitudinal study following 11,880 children ages 9-10 through

their adolescent years into young adulthood. Analyses focused on participants with available data at baseline and the 2-, 3-, and 4-year follow-up assessments. Consistent with prior research, significant correlations were identified between psychopathology and pain, as well as lagged predictive associations across time. When controlling for the exposome, several lagged predictive relationships became non-significant. However, psychopathology and pain remained significantly associated within the same timepoints. These findings contribute to a better understanding of how mental and physical health interact during development and point to the importance of the exposome for understanding the development of well-being.

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