Longitudinal associations among academic achievement and depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation in elementary schoolchildren: disentangling between- and within-person associations

Prior cross-sectional and unidirectional longitudinal research has investigated the associations among academic achievement, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation without distinguishing between-person effects from within-person effects. Our study aimed to examine the longitudinal relations among academic achievement, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation in a sample of elementary school children at the within-person level using cross-lagged panel models (CLPMs) and random intercept cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPMs). Also, multiple models replicated these findings by using three measures of academic achievement (i.e., objective academic achievement, subjective academic achievement, and teacher-assigned academic achievement). A sample of 715 Chinese elementary schoolchildren completed self-report measures of subjective academic achievement, depressive symptoms, and suicidal ideation on five occasions, using 6-month intervals. Objective academic achievement data were obtained from school records and teacher-assigned academic achievement data were reported by teachers. The results showed that: (a) In CLPMs, objective academic achievement negatively predicted suicidal ideation. However, RI-CLPMs supported the negative effect of suicidal ideation on objective academic achievement. (b) The CLPMs revealed reciprocal associations between subjective and teacher-assigned academic achievement and depressive symptoms, respectively. However, RI-CLPMs only provided support for the negative effect of depressive symptoms on subjective academic achievement. (c) Both the CLPMs and the RI-CLPMs showed bidirectional relations between depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation. These findings highlight that mental health problems (e.g., depressive symptoms and suicidal ideation) serve as antecedents of academic performance and that it is beneficial to distinguish between between-person and within-person effects in research informing the development of prevention and intervention programs.