Affluent adolescents, depression, and drug use: the role of adults in their lives

Adolescence, Summer, 2005 by Kimber L. Bogard

between various supports and psychological adjustment by DuBois et al. (1992), indicates that initial school support may have a delayed, but positive effect on adjustment outcomes.

Peers

Although peers have been shown to play an important role in various domains of social development (Rubin, Bukowski, & Parker, 1998; Coie, Dodge, & Kupersmidt, 1990), they have also been associated with negative outcomes for adolescents (Luthar & D'Avanzo, 1999; Dishion, McCord, & Poulin, 1999; Cauce et al., 1992), or with having neutral effects on depressive affect (Petersen et al. 1991). In the present study, girls reported going to peers more often than any other support when personally troubled, but yet peers had no effect on girls' self-reported depression or drug use. The role of peers has also been found to differ in girls and boys (Burke & Weir, 1978). Peer support in this affluent population showed a moderate relationship to depression for boys, but no relationship to drug use. These results differ from those of Luthar and D'Avanzo (1999) with a high school population of affluent adolescents. They found that peer popularity among boys was predictive of substance use. It could be that youngsters in junior high school find it less acceptable to do drugs than do their high school counterparts. The neutral effect of peer support on maladjustment outcomes in this sample is of importance since peers are a popular source of support. Intervention programs targeting peers in schools could be one avenue for reducing the number of youth experiencing negative psychological outcomes. Given the findings by Luthar and D'Avanzo, it would be wise to begin peer interventions early, especially those targeting substance use.

Some limitations of this study should be taken into account when interpreting the results. First, all data are self-report. Self-report data was necessary since the investigation assessed perceived parental closeness, depressive symptomology, substance use, and reports of who the youths go to when personally troubled or upset. It would be informative, though, to examine the extent to which parent and youth reports on the variables examined coincide, or differ. Second, the results are not causal, but rather correlational in nature since the research is not longitudinal. Therefore, three possibilities exist for associations between social support and symptomology: (1) Social support may cause changes in self-reported symptomology; (2) self-reported symptomology may cause changes in reported support; or (3) a third variable may be responsible for changes in levels of self-reported symptomology and support (Cohen & Wills, 1985). Third, since this is a relatively new population that is being empirically examined, further research is needed with different samples of affluent children and adolescents in order to validate the findings before the results of this study can be generalized to all affluent pre-teens and adolescents.

FUTURE RESEARCH

Several researchers have suggested that culturally relevant research is necessary to examine populations that differ from the more commonly studied white middle class (Garcia Coll et al., 1996; Burton, Allison, & Obeidallah, 1996; Allen & Mitchell, 1998). This is true not only for non-white children and adolescents, but economically different populations, since family income potentially constrains the types of resources available for children (Duncan & Brooks-Gunn, 1997). In the case of wealthy families, their resources are not typically available to low-income and middle-class children, in turn leading to different contexts within which children develop. Although there has been an increase in the study of contextual effects on child development in general (Jessor, 1993), there is still a lack of developmental studies within populations of affluence (Luthar & Becker, 2002). It is important to study all populations of youth not only to learn about the strengths and weaknesses unique to each, but also to inform psychology about human development in general.