<p>Adolescents may experience both depressive symptoms and posttraumatic growth during and post-pandemic, yet little is known about how the two psychological responses unfold together over time among heterogeneous adolescents. Participants were 722 Chinese adolescents (M_age = 12.74, SD = 0.65; 47.93% were female) who were followed annually from 2021 to 2023. This study examined the developmental trajectories of depressive symptoms and posttraumatic growth, and compared the variations in their coexistence patterns across the three years. Overall, depressive symptoms increased while posttraumatic growth declined over time. In 2021 and 2022, four patterns of psychological adjustment were observed, including resilient (low depressive symptoms, low growth), struggling (high depressive symptoms, high growth), thriving (low depressive symptoms, high growth), and demoralizing (high depressive symptoms, low growth) groups. By 2023, these patterns narrowed to two adaptive groups, resilient and thriving groups. This shift did not reflect psychological convergence; instead, individual differences in depressive symptoms became more pronounced over time, whereas variability in posttraumatic growth remained relatively stable. Notably, declines in posttraumatic growth tended to precede worsening depressive symptoms among more vulnerable adolescents, suggesting that the loss of positive psychological resources may signal later mental health difficulties. Together, these findings showed that adolescents’ post-pandemic adjustment was marked by increasing average distress alongside growing individual divergence, highlighting the need to understand adolescent mental health as a set of evolving and unequal developmental pathways rather than a single shared trend.</p>