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

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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 suggest that social anxiety symptoms play a crucial role as potential antecedent of emerging feelings of loneliness and depression in adolescence. In addition, in line with theoretical expectations, our results suggest the presence of a vicious cycle between adolescents’ feelings of loneliness and social anxiety symptoms. The indirect effects were inconsistent across samples and no gender differences were found. These findings shed more light on the unique temporal relationships among different internalizing problems. Clinical interventions should target social anxiety symptoms to prevent feelings of loneliness and vice versa.

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Notes

  1. Two studies were based on an adolescent sample that was used in the current study as well.

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Funding

This study was funded by Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) (Grant number: G.0565.15N).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School Psychology and Development in Context Research Group, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102 box 3717, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Sofie Danneel, Annette Spithoven, Margot Bastin, Patricia Bijttebier, Hilde Colpin, Karine Verschueren & Luc Goossens

  2. Research Centre Adolescent Development, Utrecht University, Heidelberglaan 1 Room E228, 3584, Utrecht, the Netherlands

    Stefanie Nelemans

  3. Methodology of Educational Sciences, KU Leuven, Tiensestraat 102 box 3762, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Wim Van Den Noortgate

  4. Parenting and Special Education Research Group, KU Leuven, Leopold Vanderkelenstraat 32 box 3765, 3000, Leuven, Belgium

    Karla Van Leeuwen

Authors
  1. Sofie Danneel
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  2. Stefanie Nelemans
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  3. Annette Spithoven
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  4. Margot Bastin
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  5. Patricia Bijttebier
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  6. Hilde Colpin
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  7. Wim Van Den Noortgate
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  8. Karla Van Leeuwen
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  9. Karine Verschueren
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  10. Luc Goossens
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Sofie Danneel.

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Danneel, S., Nelemans, S., Spithoven, A. et al. Internalizing Problems in Adolescence: Linking Loneliness, Social Anxiety Symptoms, and Depressive Symptoms Over Time. J Abnorm Child Psychol 47, 1691–1705 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10802-019-00539-0

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