The Association Between Adult Supportive Relationships and Adolescent Well-Being

Background: Parent support is clearly a critical element for adolescent’s mental health. Teacher support is also supported as a key influence on students’ mental health. Far less is known about the influence that other adults in the community have on mental health, or the importance of multiple sources of support for adolescents. This study aims to add to our understanding of adolescent mental health by exploring the influence of community adult relationships, and the importance of multiple sources of support for adolescent mental health.

Methods: Data from the 2011 California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS) was used for this analysis; a sample of 7th, 9^th, and 11^th grade students (n = 14, 931) was drawn from six school districts in Southern California. All questions are student self-report. Mental health was measured with two adapted scales for well-being and depression. Other researchers using these scales and this data have reported internal reliabilities of a =.894 for well-being and a = .848 for depression. Adult support was measured with two items measuring parent support, and two scales measuring teacher support and community adult support. Separate multivariate OLS regression models were conducted for well-being and depression.

Results: For well-being, the model examining adult support explained 21.5% of the variance. Adult support variables were all significant in the final model: Parents coming to school and parents helping with schoolwork were significantly positively associated with well-being. Teacher support and community adult support were also both significantly positively associated with well-being. For depression, our model examining adult support explained only 5.3% of the variance. Adult support variables in this model were also significant: Parents coming to school and parents helping with school work were both significantly negatively associated with depression. Teacher support and community adult support were also significantly negatively associated with depression. 

Discussion: Adult support was associated with higher reports of well-being and lower reports of depression in our sample. What is particularly important is that more variance in well-being than depression is explained by social support, indicating that adult support may be more important for well-being than it is for improving depression. This study also provides support for the hypothesis that combinations of multiple adult relationships are important; parent, teacher, and community adult support were all independently significant in our models explaining well-being and depression. Future research is needed to determine if there are combinations of parent, teacher and community adult support that are most important, and if support from one group might compensate from a lack of support from another group. Further, it is important to examine other factors explaining depression.