Correlates of Maternal Depressive Symptomatology Among Latinx Head Start Mothers

Background and Purpose: Low-income, Latinx mothers are at high risk for experiencing maternal depression, which can impact their young children. This population experiences a variety of unique stressors based on their social location and therefore it is important to understand which factors are associated with depression risk. The current study had two aims: 1) document the rate of elevated maternal depressive symptoms among Latinx Head Start mothers, and 2) apply a conceptual model from Lara-Cinisomo et al. (2016) to examine whether contextual and cultural factors were associated with depressive symptoms among Latinx Head Start mothers. This study further develops the theoretical conceptualization of contextual stressors by examining the impact of both socioeconomic and psychosocial/health factors and including a wide range of factors in each domain.

Methods: Baseline data were gathered from 163 Latinx mothers enrolled in a larger intervention trial (M_age = 32.7, SD=6.3). 41% of mothers were born in Mexico, 25% were born in the United States, 14% in El Salvador, 11% in Guatemala, and the remainder in other Central/South American countries. Mothers were screened for depressive symptoms using the Center for Epidemiology Studies Depression Scale (CES-D). Hierarchical regression models were used to examine whether socioeconomic factors (maternal education, maternal employment, maternal insurance status, household income, family economic pressure, and number of children in household), psychosocial and health factors (maternal age, lifetime trauma exposure, intimate partner violence exposure, partner status, health problems, social support, and prior mental health history), and cultural factors (maternal nativity and preferred language) explained a statistically significant amount of variance in maternal depressive symptoms. In this study, valid and reliable standardized measures of trauma were used, strengthening the findings and building on prior literature. For example, lifetime trauma exposure was measured using the Trauma History Questionnaire (THQ; Hooper et al., 2011) and intimate partner violence exposure was measured using the revised Conflict Tactics Scale (CTS2; Straus, 1996).

Results: 38% of Latinx Head Start mothers reported clinically significant levels of depressive symptomatology on the CES-D. In the final hierarchical regression model, reporting income from earnings (b=-.12, p=.05), maternal age (b=-.14, p<.05), and social support (b=-.37, p<.001) were negatively associated with depressive symptoms, whereas refusing to report income (b=.16, p=<.05), lifetime trauma exposure (b=.23, p=<.001), exposure to current physical and verbal IPV (b=.22, p=<.01), and endorsing a prior history of depression (b=.17, p=<.01) were positively associated with depressive symptoms. Cultural factors were not significant. The final model explained 59% of the variance in maternal depressive symptoms.

Conclusions and Implications: Findings indicate a high rate of elevated depressive symptomatology among this population. Although research tends to focus on maternal mental health concerns during the perinatal period, this study demonstrates the importance of considering the impact of depressive symptoms among Latinx mothers of preschool age children. Additionally, findings highlight that cross-system interventions should address both structural and psychosocial contributors to maternal depression for this population. The lack of findings around cultural factors echoes some prior studies and may be due to the use of two proxy variables of acculturation.