Original article
Impact of Early Adolescent Anxiety Disorders on Self-Esteem Development From Adolescence to Young Adulthood

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jadohealth.2013.02.025Get rights and content

Abstract

Purpose

To examine the association between early adolescent anxiety disorders and self-esteem development from early adolescence through young adulthood.

Methods

Self-esteem was measured at mean ages 13, 16, and 22 for 821 participants from the Children in the Community Study, a population-based longitudinal cohort. Anxiety disorders were measured at mean age 13 years. Multilevel growth models were employed to analyze the change in self-esteem from early adolescence to young adulthood and to evaluate whether adolescent anxiety disorders predict both average and slope of self-esteem development.

Results

Self-esteem increased during adolescence and continued to increase in young adulthood. Girls had lower average self-esteem than boys, but this difference disappeared when examining the effect of anxiety. Adolescents with anxiety disorder had lower self-esteem, on average, compared with healthy adolescents (effect size [ES] = −.35, p < .01). Social phobia was found to have the greatest relative impact on average self-esteem (ES = −.30, p < .01), followed by overanxious disorder (ES = −.17, p < .05), and simple phobia (ES = −.17, p < .05). Obsessive compulsive-disorder (OCD) predicted a significant decline in self-esteem from adolescence to young adulthood (β = −.1, p < .05). Separation anxiety disorder was not found to have any significant impact on self-esteem development.

Conclusions

All but one of the assessed adolescent anxiety disorders were related to lower self-esteem, with social phobia having the greatest impact. OCD predicted a decline in self-esteem trajectory with age. The importance of raising self-esteem in adolescents with anxiety and other mental disorders is discussed.

Section snippets

Participants and study procedures

Data were drawn from the Children in the Community (CIC) study, based on a randomly sampled cohort of more than 800 families with at least one child between ages one to 10 residing in two upstate New York counties in 1975 [19]. The study sample comprises of one randomly selected child per family, and is demographically representative of children living in the northeastern United States at the time. The regions were selected for their similarities in racial distribution and socioeconomic status

Profile of sample

Self-esteem was measured in 756 of the 821 subjects during wave 2, 750 at wave 3, and 751 at wave 4. About 51% of the participants were male and 49% were female; more than 91% were white and about 9% of the subjects were black. More than 27% of all participants had at least one anxiety disorder, not distinguishing from other Axis I disorders. About 14% of all participants were reported to have at least overanxious disorder; about 5% have OCD; 11% have simple phobia; 8% reported social phobia;

Discussion

The present research investigated self-esteem development from adolescence through young adulthood using longitudinal data based on three waves of data collected from the CIC study. Our findings are consistent with the research [2], [7], [27], [28], indicating that self-esteem increases from adolescence through young adulthood. Those with any type of anxiety disorder have lower average self-esteem compared with the healthy group. Our results suggest that distinct anxiety disorders differ in

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by National Institute of Mental Health (MH-36971, MH-38914, MH-38916, and MH-49191). Dr. Chen's time was supported, in part, by University of South Florida Proposal Enhancement Grant No. 0090681.

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