Exploring Risk and Resilience for Health and Mental Health Among African American Youth in Public Housing

Background/Rationale: African-American (AA) youth continue to be disproportionately affected by many of America’s social problems such as poverty, exposure to violence, police brutality, crime, and academic failure. Despite the disproportionate exposure to social and environmental risk factors, many AA youth do not experience the psychological and sociological conflict as suggested in the literature. In fact, many youth possess and utilize positive coping strategies that promote well-being. Youths’ ability to demonstrate such coping skills is identified as resiliency. This resilience contributes to development of pro-social behaviors and attitudes that lead to more positive future outcomes for AA youth such as academic success, decreased criminal justice involvement, increased aspirations, and emotional intelligence. However, current research fails to provide a comprehensive representation of the unique differences, strengths and capacities that exist among youth of color. This study therefore has two primary objectives: 1) To identify classes of African-American youth that possess higher and lower levels of resiliency; and 2) To determine if class membership can be predicted by exposure to indicators of community violence and familial relationships. Meeting these objectives can help practitioners achieve equal opportunity, equity, and justice for this population.

Methods: Data were collected from 305 African-American youth who reside in public housing in Washington, D. C. Several standardized scales were used to collect information regarding youth’s self-esteem, depression, anxiety, delinquent behaviors, parental encouragement and supervision, and exposure to community violence. To meet objective one, Latent Profile Analysis was used to identify classes of youth who exhibited the most and least resilient behaviors. To meet objective two, Bivariate and Multinomial Logistic Regression analyses were performed to identify variables that predicted class membership.

Results: Two classes emerged as the best class solution. In the more resilient class (50.5%), youth reported having greater self-esteem and lower engagement in delinquent behaviors and well as lower scores on depression and anxiety inventories. In the less resilient class (49.5%), youth reported having much lower self-esteem and higher levels of engagement in delinquent behaviors, as well as higher scores on depression and anxiety inventories. Exposure to community violence (e.g., exposure to delinquent peers) predicted membership in the high functioning class (B = -.15; SE = .06; p < .05), suggesting youth in this group are exposed to significantly less community violence than that of the low functioning group.

Conclusions: Examining within difference among African American youth is a significant step to understanding the service needs of AA youth in the United States today. This research can assist social workers and other service providers in developing appropriate preventive intervention strategies specifically for this population: strategies that build on personal strengths and capacities. Practitioners and public policy makers can use findings from this study to establish new policies and create programs to prevent these youth from committing crimes and dropping out of school. Further, assistance can be provided to help them enter institutions of higher learning and to subsequently secure gainful employment. Implications for social work practice and research are provided.