Globally, it is estimated that 1 in 5 children and adolescents have mental health problems (World Health Organization, 2003, (2012)), affecting their current and future quality of life, academic achievement and social relations. Mental health is an especially relevant issue in Chile, and little research has been undertaken on the child and youth populations. In international comparisons, evidence has been found that children under 6 years of age have low mental health indicators (Rescorla et al., 2011, 2012). The last study that widely included this population was that of Vicente et al. (2012), which found more symptoms in children than in adolescents.

The classic categorization of mental health problems has been to consider them as either internalizing or externalizing (Achenbach and Edelbrock, 1981). Internalized mental health problems have been studied both together (White et al., 2013), but more often, they have been analyzed separately. These usually include depression, anxiety, social anxiety, somatization, post-traumatic stress, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (Balan et al., 2017; Boyraz et al., 2019). Externalized mental health problems include disruptive or inappropriate behaviors, such as Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity-Impulsivity, Anger Control Problems, Aggression, Defiant Behavior, and Antisocial Behavior (Jenson et al., 2011; Lewis et al., 2016; Van Heel et al., 2019; Bishop et al., 2020). The first two are sometimes considered to be specifically executive function problems (Re et al., 2015).

Analyzing psychosocial variables related to internalizing and externalizing problems would facilitate progress in their prevention and promotion of mental health. Ollendick and Grills (2016), in a review, suggest that locus of control and self-control should be measured simultaneously to better understand childhood anxiety. Depression has been found to be associated with locus of control and self-control in children (Garaigordobil et al., 2017), and both have presented a significant association with each other (Autry and Langenbach, 1985; Gwandure and Mayekiso, 2010).

Based on Social Learning Theory, Rotter (1954) developed the concept of locus of control of reinforcement, the way in which an expectation can be strengthened is central: “The effects of reward or reinforcement on preceding behavior depends in part on whether the person perceives the reward as contingent on his own behavior or independent of it” (Rotter, 1966, p. 1). External locus of control is when these effects are “typically perceived as the result of luck, chance, fate, as under the control of powerful others, or as unpredictable because of the great complexity of the forces surrounding him” (Rotter, 1966, p. 1). Conversely, a person is considered to have an internal locus of control, when they perceive that there is a cause-and-effect relationship based on their own behavior (Rotter, 1966).

The control that children and adolescents perceive over what happens to them can influence their emotional problems (Levin, 1992). Locus of control is affected by context, as reflected in a study of institutionalized children, who tended to have a higher external locus of control compared to those living with their families (Król et al., 2019). There is also the possibility that internalizing problems can be influenced by socio-economic factors including area of residence (McDermott et al., 2017).

Locus of Control has been found to be linked to mental health (Groth et al., 2019; Kesavayuth et al., 2019) and may predict suicide risk (Loftis et al., 2019) and discipline problems (Tony, 2003). Adolescents with a high external locus of control score tended to have more emotional problems when under high levels of stress (Huebner et al., 2001; Aspelmeier et al., 2012). Both their direct relationship to depression and anxiety and their possible mediating effects have been reported (Di Pentima et al., 2019). The effect of social stress on locus of control has also been considered (Millman et al., 2017). A longitudinal study found an association between an increased external locus of control and depression (Sullivan et al., 2017). Also, locus of control was found to be a significant predictor of externalizing problems in adolescents (Liu et al., 2000). When children perceive that they have little control over events, they are more likely to develop externalizing problems (Jackson et al., 2000).

“Self-control is the exertion of control over the self by the self. That is, self-control occurs when a person (or other organism) attempts to change the way he or she would otherwise think, feel, or behave” (Muraven and Baumeister, 2000, p. 247). Nigg (2017) proposes that self-control is an essential aspect of the voluntary process of self-regulation, being also key to the understanding of psychological problems. Self-control has also been proposed as a sub-domain of social skills (Gresham and Elliot, 1990). Students who have high self-control would get better grades, have higher self-esteem, as well as better interpersonal relationships, fewer psychological and emotional problems (Tangney et al., 2004). A negative relationship has been found between self-control and internalizing problems (Nie et al., 2014), particularly with depression (Jun and Choi, 2013) and anxiety (Sánchez-Aguilar et al., 2019). The possible mediating role of self-control between perceived stress and life satisfaction has also been considered (Zheng et al., 2019). It has also been proposed that self-control is important in relation to externalizing problems (Franken et al., 2015; Wills et al., 2016). In comparisons of adolescents and adults it has been shown that the former have less self-control (Oliva et al., 2019). Self-control is acquired from early childhood, is adaptive, and considered a protective factor against the onset of different psychopathologies and should be taken into consideration when developing public policies (Moffitt et al., 2011).

Gender differences have been found in the distribution of mental health problems in this population. It is more common for females to have internalizing problems (Chaplin and Aldao, 2013; Schäfer et al., 2017), conversely, males present with more externalizing problems (Navarro-Pardo et al., 2012; Campos et al., 2014).

The purpose of this study was to establish the relationship between locus of control, self-control, and internalizing problems in school children from the fourth year of primary school to the last grade of secondary education in northern Chile.

Most of the research in the areas mentioned above, focused on populations over 12 years of age, so considering a broader age range would be beneficial to the topic. In this research, the age range is 8–18 years old. There are no other studies in Chile that consider all these variables in the child and adolescent population, and can thence be used to inform mental health programs and public policies, and thus, contribute to improvements in the quality of life for young people.

We had three hypotheses:

The objective of this study was to establish the relationship between locus of control, self-control, internalized and externalized problems in school children from the fourth year of primary education to the last grade of secondary education in northern Chile.

The study results supported our first two hypotheses, showing a significant relationship between both locus of control and self-control and the internalizing and externalizing problems in the expected directions.

Partial evidence was found for hypothesis three that self-control, locus of control, and gender could together significantly predict each of the internalizing and externalizing problems. However, gender did not contribute significantly to the prediction of all of the internalizing and externalizing problems. There were also some variation between the primary school and the secondary school sample groups. In both groups, the regression models better predicted externalizing rather than internalizing problems. In addition, in the secondary sample the models predicted more than in the primary.

Self-control and locus of control were significant predictors in all regression models of internalizing and externalizing problems in both age groups. There was one exception: in the secondary school sample, locus of control did not add anything to the prediction of aggressiveness, although in primary school it was a significant predictor.

The significant negative relationship between self-control and internalizing problems was consistent with previous research, in that higher levels of self-control are negatively associated with symptoms of depression in both primary and secondary schools (Weisz et al., 2004; Jun and Choi, 2013; Nie et al., 2014). Furthermore, the findings for locus of control were also consistent with previous research linking it to internalizing problems such as depression (Culpin et al., 2015; Di Pentima et al., 2019) and anxiety (Król et al., 2019). Thus, both anxiety and depression were significantly associated with locus of control, as both would essentially imply the perception that the individual has no control over his or her life circumstances (Di Pentima et al., 2019).

The present study confirms the importance of considering locus of control and self-control simultaneously in regard to internalizing problems (especially anxiety) as suggested by Ollendick and Grills (2016). Both the association between self-control and externalizing problems (Franken et al., 2015), and between locus of control and externalizing problems are consistent with previous research (Liu et al., 2000).

These results provide evidence for the prediction models proposed in this study in which self-control, locus of control, and gender together, seem to function as predictors of internalizing and externalizing problems in school aged children. The indication of a predictive role was higher for the secondary school group, and it might be explained by the higher demands in school for this age group (Broeren and Muris, 2009; Nie et al., 2014). In Chile, the transition from eighth to ninth grade is an important milestone, as it is in the latter, that final average grades begin to count as part of the score for future university selection. This can generate greater stress than in the early school years, given the greater performance pressure, among other things, reflected in an increase of students that have to retake a year (Ministerio de Educación de Chile, Centro de Estudios, Unidad de Estadísticas, 2018).

Future research should consider other variables that could add more predictive power to these models. For example, psychosocial variables, such as social support and resilience, should be investigated as they can be incorporated into intervention programs (Carle and Chassin, 2004; Attar-Schwartz et al., 2019).

The fact that depression had the highest association with both locus of control and self-control in both age groups, implied that depression is mostly influenced by the ability for, and experience of, control between internalizing problems. Furthermore, although anxiety is usually studied as often as depression, the results of the present study showed that in primary school, both post-traumatic stress and somatic complaints were influenced more by self-control. In secondary school, although anxiety increases, it is still slightly below the last two. Social anxiety increases almost twice as much, although it did not reach the level of general anxiety. These results suggest that it will be necessary to analyze them as separate variables, as well as to assess them together, but as independent sub-dimensions. Studying depression and anxiety from a single score may hide the fact that depression could be more influenced by locus of control and self-control variables.

Between the externalizing problems, it was noteworthy that attention problems were explained mostly by independent variables followed by hyperactivity-impulsivity, although it is evident that the externalizing problems had a stronger relationship to the control variables compared to the internalizing. This is consistent with the importance given to the role of locus of control and self-control in the literature about externalizing problems (Jenson et al., 2011).

It is remarkable that self-control weighs more than locus of control in the prediction of each of the internalizing and externalizing problems. This may be because children and adolescents’ ability to control impulses, emotions, thoughts and behaviors may be more directly related to their mental health than their assessment of whether or not their own behaviors might affect their outcomes. However, the latter can provide information on self-management.

It has been proposed that the hormonal changes at puberty may cause girls to experience greater internalizing problems, without ignoring gender identity and other relevant psychosocial aspects (Sanborn and Hayward, 2003; Natsuaki et al., 2015). All these aspects could help explain the differences between primary and secondary samples concerning gender.

Although the data provided by this research are significant, they have certain limitations, such as its cross-sectional nature, the lack of random selection, and the restrictions inherent in the use of self-report inventories as the primary data source. Since this is a cross-sectional study, it was not possible to establish the direction of the relationship between the variables. Finally, the two versions of the SENA are not directly comparable as they vary in the number and content of questions because they were adapted to each age group.

Despite these limitations, results suggest that both locus of control and self-control could form valuable interventions in the classroom, through the implementation of socio-emotional development programs, such as cooperative play programs and emotional intelligence, which can promote the development of social and emotional competencies that may influence control functions (Garaigordobil et al., 2017). A recent review of self-regulatory interventions suggests that they are effective in children and adolescents to improve their mental health, social skills, behavioral problems and performance (Pandey et al., 2018). Currently, Chile promotes mental health in the school environment with various programs such as Skills for Life (Lara et al., 2012; Murphy et al., 2015), which could integrate work with increasing self-control and internal locus of control to improve the effectiveness of mental health interventions.

While classroom-based interventions may contribute to improved mental health outcomes, it is essential to consider broader interventions that can involve the community and family, since internalizing problems are not limited to school settings (Kang and You, 2018). It has been found that parental supervision, whilst children and adolescents are at home, is a determining factor in the development of an internal locus of control, where a warm and nurturing environment is essential. Furthermore, it has also been observed that harsh discipline is associated with the development of an external locus of control (Ahlin and Lobo Antunes, 2015). This implies the need to support the family in parenting strategies.

Future research, of a longitudinal nature, could address the possible variation in time, both in locus of control and self-control and its relationship with internalizing and externalizing problems, which would support the findings of Sullivan et al. (2017) in relation to locus of control and its effect on depression, and expanding them to include other internalizing problems and self-control. It would be desirable to use random selection and include other regions of Central and Southern Chile, which could better investigate how minority groups score on the variables. Evaluating interventions that are aimed at increasing internal locus of control and self-control are essential in the promotion of mental health of young people.

Both locus of control and self-control showed a relationship with each dimension of internalizing and externalizing problems, with depression having the strongest association among the internalizing problems, and attention among the externalizing problems. The study results suggest that both self-control and locus of control might have an influence on internalizing and externalizing problems and we therefore recommend them to be included in mental health interventions for children and adolescents both inside and outside the school context.

The raw data supporting the conclusions of this article will be made available by the authors, without undue reservation, to any qualified researcher.

The studies involving human participants were reviewed and approved by Comité Ético Científico de la Universidad de Tarapacá. Written informed consent to participate in this study was provided by the participants’ legal guardian/next of kin.

JF: conception and design of research, preparation of the introduction of the manuscript, data collection, data analysis, and discussion of the manuscript. AC-U: conception and design of research, preparation of the introduction of the manuscript, and discussion of the manuscript. CR: preparation of the introduction of the manuscript, data collection, and discussion of the manuscript. GA and JC: preparation of the introduction of the manuscript and data collection. All authors contributed to the article and approved the submitted version.

The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.