Trajectories of Depressive Symptoms and Neighborhood Changes from Adolescence to Adulthood: Latent Class Growth Analysis and Multilevel Growth Curve Models

Hyunjung Lee,Lorena M Estrada-Martínez

doi:10.3390/ijerph17061829

Abstract

The role of neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and racial/ethnic composition on depression has received considerable attention in the United States. This study examines associations between trajectory patterns of neighborhood changes and depressive symptoms using data from Waves I-IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health. We used latent class growth analysis to determine the number and distribution of person-centered trajectories for neighborhood characteristics, and multilevel growth curve models to examine how belonging to each class impacted depression trajectories from ages 13 to 32 among non-Hispanic Whites (NHW), non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB), Hispanics, and non-Hispanic Others (NHO). The distribution of neighborhood SES classes across racial/ethnic groups suggests significant levels of economic inequality, but had no effect on depressive symptoms. A more complex picture emerged on the number and distribution of racial/ethnic composition latent class trajectories. Compared to NHB peers who lived in predominantly NHW neighborhoods from adolescence to adulthood, NHBs in more diverse neighborhoods had lower risk for depressive symptoms. Conversely, Hispanics living in neighborhoods with fewer NHWs had higher risk for depressive symptoms. Among NHOs, living in neighborhoods with a critical mass of other NHOs had a protective effect against depressive symptoms.

Highlights

There is an extensive body of research on how neighborhoods can minimize and exasperate depression among individuals [1,2,3]
We started with a three-class model and proceeded to increase the number of classes until we found the best fit model according to the Akaike Information Criterion (AIC), Bayesian Information Criterion (BIC), adjusted BIC, the entropy value, and the Lo, Mendell, and Rubin Likelihood Ratio Test (LMR-LRT)
non-Hispanic Whites (NHW) (70.6%) had the highest proportion of two-parent households, while non-Hispanic Blacks (NHB) had the highest proportion of single parent-households (30.6%) Unsurprisingly, at Wave I, NHWs resided in neighborhoods with the highest level of %NHW (89.1%) than any group

Summary

Introduction

There is an extensive body of research on how neighborhoods can minimize and exasperate depression among individuals [1,2,3]. The impact of neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) and racial/ethnic composition on the mental health of people of color in the United States (USA) has received significant attention, with mixed findings [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Many studies have examined the associations between these environments and depression, there is limited information on long-term depression trajectories among people who move to different types of neighborhoods from childhood through adulthood. Researchers have used life course frameworks to study depression trajectories across life stages. In 2017, 30% of non-Hispanic White (NHW), 29% of non-Hispanic Black

Methods

Results

Discussion

Conclusion