Internalizing Problems in Adolescence: Linking Loneliness, Social Anxiety Symptoms, and Depressive Symptoms Over Time.

Internalizing Problems in Adolescence: Linking Loneliness, Social Anxiety Symptoms, and Depressive Symptoms Over Time. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2019 Apr 01;: Authors: Danneel S, Nelemans S, Spithoven A, Bastin M, Bijttebier P, Colpin H, Van Den Noortgate W, Van Leeuwen K, Verschueren K, Goossens L Abstract Adolescents are particularly vulnerable to experiencing loneliness, social anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms. These internalizing problems often co-occur but, until now, it remains unclear how they are associated over time. Insight in these temporal sequences is important to enhance our understanding of how internalizing problems arise and may reinforce each other over time. To examine these temporal sequences, three samples of adolescents were used: Sample 1 consisted of 1,116 adolescents (48.97% girls, Mage = 13.59), Sample 2 of 1,423 adolescents (52.42% girls, Mage = 13.79), and Sample 3 of 549 adolescents (62.66% girls, Mage = 14.82). Adolescents filled out well-established self-report measures of loneliness, social anxiety symptoms, and depressive symptoms during regular school hours at three measurement occasions with a 1-year interval. Meta-analytic techniques were used to estimate the average true effects across three-variable autoregressive cross-lagged models in the three samples. In addition, indirect effects and gender differences in the temporal associations were explored in all three samples. The results sugges...
Source: Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Authors: Tags: J Abnorm Child Psychol Source Type: research