Family Support, Family Negative Interactions, and Friend Support of Emerging Adults with Mood and Anxiety Disorders: In Comparison with Mature Adults

Background/Purpose: Examining social support is of great importance because it is critical to recovery of individuals with mood and anxiety disorders (MAD). Yet, prior mental health research on social support usually studied community residing adults of all ages and gave little attention to the developmental stages. However, social support is not universal across life-span; rather changes over time. Emerging adulthood is marked by a great deal of instability and transition, so it is possible that social support of emerging adults with MAD differs from those with MAD in older ages. Previous mental health research and interventions have not effectively served emerging adults with MAD by neglecting the uniqueness of social support in this population. Therefore, this study aims to identify the uniqueness of social support characteristics among emerging adults with MAD by comparing the level of family support, family negative interactions, and friend support between emerging and mature adults with MAD.

Methods: Data from the National Survey of American Life was used for the secondary data analysis. Respondents who had a diagnosis on the spectrum of mood and anxiety disorders were included (n=1,003). Samples were predominantly female (71.6%) and non-White (78.4%). Social support in this study was measured using Likert scale items, having 4 to 7 response options. The Structured Means Model (SMM) was administered to compare the means differences between emerging (n=152) and mature adults (n=851). Emerging adults in the current study were defined as adults aged 18 to 25 whereas mature adults were defined as those aged 26 or older.

Results: The SMM results supported the partial strong invariance of three-factor model of social support between emerging and mature adults with mood and anxiety disorders (Chi-square(df=88)=222.375, p<.001; RMSEA=.055; 90% CI = .046, .064; CFI=.965; TLI=.956). Therefore, factor means of family support, family negative interactions, and friend support were compared. Results revealed that emerging adults with MAD, as compared to mature adults with those diagnoses, had lower family support (B=-.152, p=.007) and higher family negative interactions (B=.419, p<.001); but the level of friends support was not statistically different (B=.058, p=.626). Standardized effects sizes suggested that the magnitude of the differences in factor means of family support (ES_fs=.582) and family negative interactions (ES_fn=.600) were medium.

Conclusions and implications: Findings revealed that social support characteristics of emerging adults with MAD significantly differ from mature adults with MAD in terms of family relationships, rather than friend relationships. This implies that emerging adults with MAD experience difficulties related to family, even more than individuals with the same diagnoses in older ages. Family interventions are particularly important for emerging adults with MAD. Future research and interventions should take into account the uniqueness of social support in this population.