title: Co-occurrence of social anxiety and depression symptoms in adolescence: differential links with implicit and explicit self-esteem?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Social anxiety and depression often co-occur. As low self-esteem has been identified as a risk factor for both types of symptoms, it may help to explain their co-morbidity. Current dual process models of psychopathology differentiate between explicit and implicit self-esteem. Explicit self-esteem would reflect deliberate self-evaluative processes whereas implicit self-esteem would reflect simple associations in memory. Previous research suggests that low explicit self-esteem is involved in both social anxiety and depression whereas low implicit self-esteem is only involved in social anxiety. We tested whether the association between symptoms of social phobia and depression can indeed be explained by low explicit self-esteem, whereas low implicit self-esteem is only involved in social anxiety.
  
  
  METHODS
  Adolescents during the first stage of secondary education (n=1806) completed the Revised Child Anxiety and Depression Scale (RCADS) to measure symptoms of social anxiety and depression, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) to index explicit self-esteem and the Implicit Association Test (IAT) to measure implicit self-esteem.
  
  
  RESULTS
  There was a strong association between symptoms of depression and social anxiety that could be largely explained by participants' explicit self-esteem. Only for girls did implicit self-esteem and the interaction between implicit and explicit self-esteem show small cumulative predictive validity for social anxiety, indicating that the association between low implicit self-esteem and social anxiety was most evident for girls with relatively low explicit self-esteem. Implicit self-esteem showed no significant predictive validity for depressive symptoms.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  The findings support the view that both shared and differential self-evaluative processes are involved in depression and social anxiety.
authors.affiliation: Department of Clinical Psychology, University of Groningen, The Netherlands. p.j.de.jong@rug.nl
authors.forename: P J
authors.initials: PJ
authors.lastname: de Jong
authors.forename: B E
authors.initials: BE
authors.lastname: Sportel
authors.forename: E
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: de Hullu
authors.forename: M H
authors.initials: MH
authors.lastname: Nauta
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D001007:Anxiety; D015897:Comorbidity; D003863:Depression / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D004812:Epidemiologic Methods; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008960:Models, Psychological; D009426:Netherlands / Q000453:epidemiology; D010698:Phobic Disorders / Q000453:epidemiology* / Q000523:psychology; D011569:Psychiatric Status Rating Scales; D011581:Psychological Tests; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology; D012649:Self Concept; D017678:Sex Distribution