Within-person longitudinal associations between depressive symptoms and problematic interpersonal behaviors in adolescent girls

Background: Adolescence, particularly for girls, is a period of heightened risk for depressive symptoms and increased interpersonal stress. Although depressive symptoms and problematic interpersonal behaviors are known to co-occur, prior work has predominantly examined between-person associations, leaving within-person processes unclear. This study addressed this gap by testing longitudinal within-person associations between depressive symptoms and problematic interpersonal behaviors in adolescent girls over four years, evaluating whether links were reciprocal or unidirectional. Methods: Participants included 543 adolescent girls from the Pittsburgh Girls Study. At ages 16, 17, 18, and 19, girls self-reported depressive symptoms and eight types of problematic interpersonal behaviors: domineering, vindictive, cold, socially avoidant, non-assertive, exploitable, overly nurturant, and intrusive. For each interpersonal behavior, we fit both constrained and unconstrained random-intercept cross-lagged panel models and selected the constrained model unless it demonstrated a significantly poorer fit than the unconstrained model, prioritizing parsimony. Results: The selected models demonstrated good fit for all eight interpersonal behaviors. Within-person increases in depressive symptoms predicted subsequent within-person increases in overly nurturant and socially avoidant behaviors, whereas these behaviors did not predict subsequent within-person increases in depressive symptoms. By contrast, depressive symptoms and domineering behaviors reciprocally predicted one another over time. Conclusions: This study clarifies how depressive symptoms and interpersonal behaviors influence one another over time within individuals in adolescent girls. Findings highlight domineering behaviors as a potential intervention target for breaking cycles of mutual reinforcement with depressive symptoms. Moreover, addressing depressive symptoms may yield social benefits by reducing subsequent overly nurturant and socially avoidant behaviors.