Associations between childhood adversity, psychiatric symptoms, and self-esteem outcomes in adolescents and young adults: An experience sampling study

Abstract

Objectives: Self-esteem and self-esteem stability are important factors during adolescence and young adulthood that can be negatively impacted by childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms. We examined whether childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms are associated with decreased global self-esteem as well as increased self-esteem instability as measured with experience sampling method. In addition, we examined if childhood adversity moderates the association between psychiatric symptoms and self-esteem outcomes. Methods: Our study consisted of 788 adolescents and young adults who were part of a twin pair. The twin structure was not of interest to the current study. Mean age was 16.8 (SD = 2.38, range: 14−25), 42% was male. We used a multilevel modeling approach to examine our hypotheses to account for the presence of twins in the data set. Results: Childhood adversity and psychiatric symptoms were negatively associated with global self-esteem (respectively standardized β = −.18, SE = 0.04, p