Loïs Schenk, Miranda Sentse, Reshmi Marhe, Laura van Duin, Godfried Engbersen, Arne Popma, Sabine Severiens
Young adulthood is characterized by many life changes. Especially for young men with problems across different life domains (i.e., multi-problem), these changes may entail obstacles. Incidences of Psychopathology increase during young adulthood and at the same time important shifts in social networks - such as changing relations with peers and parents, isolation, or deviant peer affiliation - take place. The present study examined the longitudinal interplay between Psychopathology and social network characteristics over the course of 1 year in multi-problem young adults, at both between-person and within-person level. A sample of 696 multi-problem young adult men (age 18-27) participated in this three wave study. We used traditional cross-lagged panel models (CLPM) to examine how social network characteristics and Psychopathology are related at the between-person level, and random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) to examine within-person links. Between-person associations between internalizing problems and social networks were bidirectional, and externalizing problems were related to problematic social network characteristics, but not vice versa. At the within-person level, no such cross-lagged paths were found. Overall, results indicated that in multi-problem young adults, social network characteristics and Psychopathology are related. However, looking at within-person processes this relation is not reciprocal.
