Self-esteem and Psychopathology among Chinese Teenagers and University Students

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Self-esteem has been reported to be an important predictor of psychopathology including depression, suicidal ideation, and aggression. However, these findings are mainly from Western populations and their impact on Chinese adolescent’s mental health is unknown. The objective of present study was to evaluate the role of self-esteem on psychopathology in a Chinese young population. METHODS: A sample of 90 school and university students aged between 15-23 years old was registered in the present study, including 44 female and 46 male. Self-esteem was measured by the Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (RSES). This yielded 3 measures: overall score, self-competence and self-liking. The Symptom Checklist 90-R (SCL-90-R) was applied to assess specific psychopathology including somatization, obsessive compulsive behavior, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety, paranoid ideation, and psychoticism. In addition, the total score of those nine dimensions provided a Global Severity Index (GSI). We used multiple linear regression analysis to explore whether self-esteem could predict psychopathology after controlling the potential confounding effects of age and gender. RESULTS: In our data setting, after adjustment for age and gender, there were significant negative correlations between the overall RSES score and score of phobic anxiety (β=−0.27, P=0.01). Furthermore, significant correlations were found between RSES self-liking scores and obsessive compulsive behavior (β=−0.33, P=0.002), interpersonal sensitivity (β=−0.33, P=0.002), depression (β=−0.37, P=0.0003), anxiety (β=−0.35, P=0.001), hostility (β=−0.21, P=0.048), phobic anxiety (β=−0.33, P=0.002), psychoticism (β=−0.29, P=0.007), and GSI (β=−0.34, P=0.001). Higher self-liking in Chinese teenagers and university students was related with less psychopathological risk of obsessive compulsive behavior, interpersonal sensitivity, depression, anxiety, hostility, phobic anxiety as well as psychoticism. Interestingly, no significant correlation was detected for self-competence scores. DISCUSSION: In this Chinese cohort of adolescents and young adults, consistently with the western population, self-esteem significantly correlated with psychopathology. Specifically, higher self-liking predicted less psychopathology. The results promote better understanding of the relationship between self-esteem and the risk of mental illness, which may inform potential clinical intervention programs in the future.