Examining the Associations between Caregiver Factors and U.S. Adolescents' Mental Health: Latent Class Analyses

Background: Our study aims to address a critical gap in research by focusing on the mental health of adolescents using the social-ecological model. This model is well-suited for understanding the complex interplay between adolescents and their environments. We used latent class analysis (LCA) to help identify underlying patterns or classes within the dataset to reveal nuanced relationships between caregiver factors and adolescent outcomes. By examining how different combinations of caregiver factors relate to the mental health of adolescents, our study can provide valuable insights into the mechanisms through which family dynamics impact adolescent well-being.

Mehods: We used national data (wave 6) from children aged between 14 and 19 from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing survey completed in 2017. We identified whose primary caregivers participated in wave 6 to include caregiver indicators, such as marriage, living with a child, employment and insurance, educational level, alcohol and drug use, depression, anxiety, and mental and physical health. For child’s mental health, we selected depression by the Center for Epidemiologic Study Depression Scale. Using STATA 17. Adoescelnts’ sex was treated as a covariate. After evaluating the model fit indices, we selected the four-class model as our final model in combinations of risk and protective factors (MLL = -12751.5, AIC = 25.580.99, BIC = 25,817.83, entropy = 0.60), depicting (a) Class 1 (High-Risk Factors) having caregivers experiencing all risk factors; (b) Class 2 (Poverty with Life Satisfaction); (c) Class 3 (Highly Protective Factors), having caregivers experiencing all protective factors; and (d) Class 4 (High Emotional Risk and Protective Factors), having caregivers experiencing emotional risk factors and all protective factors.

Results: Based on the different classes of risk and protective factors utilized, we found that adolescents whose caregivers have high-risk factors (Class 1) are more likely to experience depression than adolescents whose caregivers are in poverty with satisfaction or have all protective factors (Class 2, Class 3). Also, adolescents whose primary caregivers have high emotional risk factors (i.e., depressiveness and anxiousness) with all protective factors (Class 4) are more likely to experience depression than adolescents whose primary caregivers have all protective factors (Class 3).

Conclusion and Implications: The study findings point out that parents with protective factors provide a buffer for adolescent depressive symptoms because the more protective factors parents have, the less likely their adolescents are to experience depression. Interestingly, parental life satisfaction, educational levels, and positive emotional health allow for a lower risk of adolescent depression. Furthermore, the study findings suggest that policymakers may need to consider offering employment and educational opportunities to parents for their positive impact on children’s mental health. In addition, professionals are encouraged to assess the needs of impoverished adolescents and support them in accessing appropriate professional services. This can be achieved by providing mental health services or connecting adolescents with community resources such as complimentary counseling services. Finally, school counselors and social workers can identify risk groups of adolescents by understanding caregiver risk factors and then provide early preventive interventions to support adolescent mental health in school settings.