Depression in Adolescence: Examining the Role of School Experience and Parental Support

Background and purpose:

Substantial research evidence indicates that depression in adolescence leads to severe impairments in daily life and affects later life outcomes. The consequences of adolescent depression can adversely impact adolescents’ relationship with parents and academic outcomes. Despite existing evidence highlighting the prevalence of depression in adolescence, few studies have explored the role of factors such as school experience and parental support in influencing the mental health outcomes of adolescents. Therefore, this study examines the impact of school experiences with the moderating role of parental support on major depressive episodes in adolescents.

Method:

The study utilized the National Survey of Drug Use and Health (2019) database with a sample of adolescents, ages 12-17 (N=11,595). We conducted a moderation analysis to study the impact of school experience on major depressive episodes in adolescents with parental support as our moderating variable. We computed new variables of school experience in the past year (how adolescents felt about; going to school, whether school work was meaningful, how important were things learned, how interesting were courses at school, how often did the teacher tell them that they did a good job) and parental support in the past year (parents telling their child that they are proud of something they have done and parents telling the child that they did a good job). The impact of covariates (gender, race, age, income, and government assistance) was examined on the major depressive episodes in the past year in adolescents. Analysis of the data was conducted using PROCESS in SPSS.

Results:

Both school experience and parental support had a significant impact on adolescent depression, parental support was found to have a lesser impact on adolescent depression compared to school experience (M= 13.1835 compared to M=18.9192, p<.05). In this analysis, parental support significantly moderated the impact of school experience on adolescent depression (p<.05). One category of income and race was excluded from analysis as the reference category. The overall moderation model was statistically significant (p<.05). Covariates of government assistance, income categories, race categories; Non-Hispanic/Pacific Islander, Non-Hispanic Native American, and Hispanic were statistically non-significant (p>.05) and had no effect on the odds of adolescents experiencing a major depressive episode. However, covariates of age, gender, and race categories of black and multiracial were statistically significant (p<.05). Results also showed the odds of experiencing major depressive episodes by adolescents decreased (-.1432) for every year increase in age. Females experienced lesser major depressive episodes (-1.0515) in comparison to males.

Conclusion and Implications:

Findings suggest that the race category of black adolescents experienced increased depression in comparison to the white population. The study highlights that understudied factors such as race led to poor mental health outcomes in adolescents. Interventions at the level of schools (counseling for specific racial groups) and parents are needed that target the prevention of adolescent depression.