Relationships Among Childhood Environmental Factors in Influencing Young Adult Psychological Distress

Background and Purpose: To understand the emotional development of children, it is imperative to understand the environment in which they are nested and how they interact with their neighborhoods, schools, and families (Bronfenbrenner, 1977;Viner, et al., 2012). The perception people have of their childhood neighborhoods have important impacts on adult mental health (Hill & Maimon, 2013). Studies also suggest that school engagement has an important impact on adolescent mental health (Bond, et al., 2007). The family environment in which a child develops is perhaps the most important context for influencing mental health throughout the life course (Repetti, et al., 2002), and studies indicate that neighborhood characteristics affect family functioning (Gorman-Smith, Tolan & Henry, 2000). However, few studies investigate the impact of childhood experiences in these environmental contexts in influencing psychological health. Therefore, this study assesses influences of childhood environmental factors according to retrospective reports in relationship to each other and in predicting psychological distress in young adulthood.

 

Methods: Cross-sectional survey data were collected from 307 college students ages 18–35 (M=23.61) enrolled in an urban public college in the Western U.S. Data concerning the participants’ childhood neighborhood attachment, family conflict, school engagement, and current psychological distress were analyzed using structural equation modeling in  Mplus7 to meet the following objectives: 1) Establish constructs representative of neighborhood attachment, family conflict, school engagement, and psychological distress; 2) Identify the extent to which neighborhood attachment predicted participants’ family conflict and school engagement during adolescence; 3) Examine the extent to which participants’ family conflict and school engagement mediated the effects of neighborhood attachment on current psychological distress.

 

Results: The a priori confirmatory factor analytic model demonstrated acceptable fit to the data (X²(244) = 567.81, p < .05; RMSEA = .066; CFI = .984; TLI = .982; WRMR = 1.24). An a priori structural model found neighborhood attachment was positively associated with school engagement (STDYX = .20; 95% CI [.08, .31]; p < .01) while it was negatively associated with family conflict (STDYX = -.30; 95% CI [-.41, -.19]; p < .001). Family conflict was negatively associated with psychological distress (STDYX = -.23; 95% CI [-.35, -.11]; p < .001) and mediated the effect of neighborhood attachment on psychological distress (STDYX = .07; 95% CI [.02, .11]; p < .01). Finally, school engagement and family conflict were negatively correlated (r = -.14; 95% CI [-.31, -.07]; p < .001).

 

Conclusions and Implications: Findings reveal that family conflict mediates the influence of childhood neighborhood attachment on psychological distress. Implications for promoting positive mental health in young adults therefore point to targeting family-level interventions to improve relationships and reduce conflict. Furthermore, higher levels of neighborhood attachment are associated with higher levels of school engagement and families with greater neighborhood attachment have less conflict. Therefore, interventions promoting positive neighborhood social environments or engaging school cultures might reduce family conflict and lead to lower levels of psychological distress. Moreover, interventions addressing multiple levels of the childhood social ecology are likely to have the greatest benefit for young adult mental health.