Assessing Pathways of Cumulative Adversity Towards Incarcerated Parents' Mental Health

Background and Purpose:Disparities in health and functioning outcomes increasingly argue for attention to developmental pathways through which life adversity accumulates, progressively building risk. Research on adverse child experiences has highlighted early adversity of particular concern, and has ignited a growing body of research on the accumulation and proliferation of adversities and their impact on health across the life course. Examining pathways of early adversity’s impact on highly vulnerable populations of parents is critical, given the importance of interrupting transgenerational transmission of risk. Incarcerated parents are a priority yet underinvestigated, population of interest in this regard. Informed by theories of life course, stress proliferation and cumulative disadvantage, this study tested a path model of cumulative adversity to later mental health, examining the predictive role of adversities during childhood within families of origin and the hypothesized mediating role of child welfare and juvenile justice systems involvement, polyvictimization and socioeconomic disadvantage.

Methods:Using data from the Parent Child Study (N=359), a randomized controlled trial of a parenting program for incarcerated parents, structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to test hypothesized pathways of cumulative adversity towards later mental health. We used Tucker-Lewis Index (TLI), Comparative Fit Index (CFI), and Root Mean Square Error of Approximation (RMSEA) to assess model fit. Measures include: family of origin adversities (parental and extended family substance abuse and incarceration histories); child welfare involvement (experiences in foster care, group home and treatment facility); juvenile justice involvement (juvenile arrest, detention and lock-up); socio-economic disadvantage (monthly income prior to incarceration); polyvictimization (experiences of interpersonal victimization, partner violence and sexual assault; and mental health (depression and anxiety measured by the Brief Symptom Inventory).

Results:Results indicated good model fit (chi-square=61, TLI=.94, CFI=.96, RMSEA=.03). SEM results showed significant indirect effect of family of origin adversity on mental health mediated by child welfare involvement (path coefficient = .29, p<.05) and polyvictimization (.185, p<.05) but not juvenile justice. However, juvenile justice involvement mediated adversity’s effects on polyvictimization (.19, p<.05) and mental health outcomes (.20, p<.05). Socio-economic disadvantage was associated with polyvictimization but is not a significant mediator in this model.

Conclusion and Discussion: Results lend support to theories of stress proliferation and cumulative disadvantage, by demonstrating significant pathways between early life adversities and later mental health outcomes for incarcerated parents. Understanding these relationships in systems-involved parents has implications for the optimization of social work interventions for incarcerated parents and for their children, who also are at risk for poor behavioral and mental health outcomes. The mediating roles of juvenile justice and child welfare involvement underscore the necessity for critical assessment of social work preventive interventions that disrupt the cascade of adversities in families of origin subsequently decreasing risk and vulnerabilities of children exposed to these. Findings also provide insights regarding polyvictimization as a specific target for intervention given its mediating role on the sustained impact of early adversities on mental health. The non-significant mediating role of socio-economic disadvantage warrants further investigation, especially around assessing its indirect contribution to other forms of adversity.