A Longitudinal Latent Variable Analysis of Reciprocal Relations Between Depressive Symptoms and Delinquency During Adolescence.

Abstract

In this longitudinal study, reciprocal relations between depressive symptoms and delinquent behavior were examined for a sample of 1,218 male and female adolescents (mean age, 15.51 years at Time 1). Associations were examined within a latent variable approach, controlling for indicator-specific tendencies, students' age and parental education, time-specific 3rd-variable influences, level of prior problem behavior, and measurement error. Findings thus provided relatively unbiased estimates of existing plausible causal relations. Analyses revealed a relatively small unidirectional effect of delinquency on depression for boys (at 1 of 3 time points), and bidirectional effects of comparable size for girls. The circular process for the girls was explained drawing on gender socialization theory and theories of offending behavior. Implications for preventive interventions are also discussed.

Co‐occurrence of depression and delinquency in personality types

“…We extended Overbeek et al (2001)'s study by employing personality type membership as a moderator in the co-occurrence of these problem behaviours, as was suggested by Wiesner (2003). Since we found clear personality group differences in the stability co-occurrence model, we concluded that personality type is an important moderator in the longitudinal co-occurrence of depression and delinquency.…”

“…As Krueger (1999) and Krueger et al (1998) processes or non-specific risk factors (Fergusson et al, 1996;Wiesner, 2003). Possibly, the degree of ego-control is one of the common risk factors that could either lead to internalising or to externalising problem behaviour.…”

“…Although clear gender differences in the rank-order consistency of depression and delinquency were found (Wiesner, 2003) and since it was already found that personality type  gender proved to be an important moderator (Akse et al, 2004), we could not perform these multi-group analyses, since the personality  gender groups would be too small to get reliable results (Kline, 1998). This issue should be tested in a larger sample.…”

“…Furthermore, as was mentioned earlier, the exact longitudinal associations are not yet clear (e.g. Beyers & Loeber, 2003;Wiesner, 2003) and personality types may moderate the longitudinal association between these internalising and externalising problem behaviours (Wiesner, 2003). We formulated two competing hypotheses to answer this question.…”

“…Overcontrollers appeared to be more prone to higher levels of internalising problems, undercontrollers were found to be more prone to higher levels of externalising problems, whereas resilients exhibited the best psychosocial adjustment (Akse et al, 2004;Dubas et al, 2002;Hart et al, 2005;Robins et al, 1996;van Aken & Dubas, 2004). Since these personality types show different vulnerabilities to internalising and externalising problem behaviours, and taking into account the suggestion made by Wiesner (2003) to complement the study of longitudinal co-occurrence between depression and delinquency with person-oriented approaches, it seems fruitful to investigate whether different co-occurrence models are valid for different personality types.…”