The Association between Self-Esteem and Mental Health Problems in Adolescents with a History of Victimisation

Abstract

A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis
Adolescence marks a sensitive developmental period in a young person’s life and negative life-events may have a stronger impact during this period. One risk factor commonly experienced by adolescents is bullying and has been linked to ill mental health. Low self-esteem is a likely mediator of that effect as it has been linked to both; ill mental health and bullying.
The aim of this systematic review and meta-analysis was to determine how self-esteem is related to the mental health of adolescents who have experienced victimisation. Nineteen papers with a total of 47,524 participants met the inclusion criteria. Study quality was assessed with an adapted version of the Newcastle – Ottawa Quality Assessment Scale for Cohort studies. There were high levels of heterogeneity in the meta-analysis, suggesting that there were differences between the studies. Heterogeneity reduced markedly when the studies were separated by gender. The study provided initial evidence for the hypothesis that low self-esteem mediates the effect of bullying on internalising symptoms.

Empirical Paper
For the first time, the current study aims to determine whether self-esteem is a mediating factor between victimisation and emotional symptoms. Then whether gender or having a Special Educational Need are moderators of the mediating effect. This is a quantitative longitudinal study, spanning 7 years. Data was acquired from the Millennium Cohort Study, and the current study consists of 9957 young people, who were born in the United Kingdom in the year 2000. Of the 5021 girls 667 had SEN, of 4936 boys 1124 had SEN. Self-esteem was found to have a small but significant mediating effect between victimisation at age 7 and emotional symptoms at age 14, however, gender and special educational needs were not found to have a moderating effect, even though children with SEN reported higher rates of victimisation. As the mediating effect was small other factors may play a larger role in the mediation effect between victimisation and self-esteem.

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ORCID for Dennis Golm: orcid.org/0000-0002-2950-7935

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