Objectives The objective of this study is to investigate the effect of school violence behavior on self-esteem and depression in elementary school students. Methods The data of 3068 students in the second and third years of the Gyeonggi Education Panel Study were analyzed in order to investigate the effect of school violence behavior on self-esteem and depression. Propensity score was calculated using the covariates related to the school violence behavior. By applying the Inverse probability of treatment weight, we estimated the average treatment effect on the treated. The validity of the estimation results was verified by conducting a sensitivity analysis to test how robust the average treatment effect. Results First, there were significant differences in anxiety, academic performance, school satisfaction, and so on between the school violence behavior group and the non violence behavior group. Second, when the relevant covariates were controlled, the self-esteem of the school violence group decreased significantly after the violence behavior. Third, when the relevant covariates were controlled, the depression of the school violence group increased significantly after the violence behavior. Conclusions This study verified that school violence affects the decline in self-esteem and increase in depression in elementary school students. This result means that attempts to relieve students' low self-esteem or depression through violent behavior can ultimately lead to even lower self-esteem and higher depression. Therefore this suggests the need for psychological intervention for students who commit violent behavior in order to prevent recurrence of school violence.