The Mental Toll of Reentry: Exploring Depression, Human Capital Barriers, and Self-Efficacy Among Formerly Incarcerated Individuals

Background: While social science research has extensively linked low human capital (e.g., limited education, employment, skills, and training) to high recidivism among returning citizens, fewer studies have examined its impact on mental health and well-being. The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between human capital barriers, depression, and self-efficacy among formerly incarcerated individuals.

Methods: We used data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering [MSF-IP]. The MSF-IP data is an evaluation of a national grant program to foster and sustain healthy relationships and strengthen families where a father was involved in the criminal legal system. The data was collected from the following sites: the Indiana Department of Corrections, the RIDGE Project (Ohio), the New Jersey Department of Corrections, the Osborne Association (New York), and the Minnesota Council of Crime and Justice. A sample size of a total of 1,991 eligible men and 1,482 eligible women completed baseline interviews. We used this dataset and multivariate regression models to investigate the relationship between human capital barriers and mental health, particularly depression and self-efficacy. We included the following measures in our analysis: depression, human capital at the time of baseline, education, self-efficacy, substance use, and employment.

Results: Using data from the Multi-site Family Study on Incarceration, Parenting, and Partnering and multivariate regression models, we found that human capital barriers to employment are associated with significant reductions in depression scores and self-efficacy perception. Our results indicate that people who experienced the human capital barrier had 104% higher odds of depression. In contrast, compared to people with no employment barriers, experiencing some other barrier was not associated with depression. Compared to people with no employment barriers, people who experienced the human capital barrier had 156% higher odds of depression. In addition to our key variables of interest, we observed some associations between our control variables and depression. Compared to individuals who were reincarcerated, individuals who were not incarcerated experienced 61% lower odds of depression. Individuals who were depressed during the baseline survey had 314% higher odds of depression at 18 months compared to people who did not report depression at the baseline survey. Individuals who were arrested had lower self-efficacy, with each additional arrest associated with a small but statistically significant reduction in self-efficacy (p<0.05). Self-efficacy at baseline is significantly associated with self-efficacy at 18 months, with a one-point increase in self-efficacy at baseline associated with a 6% increase in self-efficacy at 18 months.

Conclusions and Implications: This study underscores the importance of understanding the mental health and well-being of returning citizens as an understudied measure for successful reentry. It also underscores how lack of access to human capital programming in prisons has the potential to impact more than future employment and recidivism outcomes. More fundamentally, this lack of programming may also hinder the emotional well-being of returning citizens. As key actors in reentry support, social workers must prioritize stronger mental health responses for returning citizens during and after incarceration.