Background: The association between self-esteem and internalizing symptoms has been extensively studied. While prior studies have suggested that self-esteem plays a more prominent role in the development of depressive symptoms than other types of internalizing symptoms, recent investigations that account for time-invariant confounding yield inconsistent results regarding the magnitude and direction of this association. Consequently, it remains uncertain whether self-esteem has specifically strong ties to depressive symptoms relative to other internalizing symptoms.
Methods: A total of 3251 Norwegians (54 % women) were assessed across five time points, spanning from adolescence in 1992 to midlife in 2020. Random intercept cross-lagged panel models were used to examine the bidirectional prospective associations between self-esteem and depressive symptoms, symptoms of anxiety, and disordered eating. Furthermore, multigroup structural equational modeling was implemented to investigate whether gender and parental education level moderated the associations.
Results: Results showed reduced self-esteem predicted an increase in all three types of internalizing symptoms on the within-person level. In turn, an increase in any such symptoms predicted a decrease in self-esteem. Notably, the strength of associations was similar across all symptom types and was not moderated by gender or parental education level.
Limitations: Time intervals between data collections varied and within-person associations between self-esteem and internalizing symptoms may be explained by unmeasured time-varying covariates.
Conclusions: This study is the first to examine the relative importance of within-person associations of self-esteem and various internalizing symptoms. The results indicate that self-esteem may be a viable target for interventions across different types of internalizing symptoms.
Copyright © 2025. Published by Elsevier B.V.
