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

Adolescence, Summer, 2005 by Kimber L. Bogard

Intercorrelations among parental closeness and adult support variables were generally moderate. As could be expected, for both boys and girls, parental closeness was correlated with parental support. For girls, father closeness was significantly related negatively to no one, school support, other adult support, and total domains of support. Mother closeness was negatively related to no one, and positively related to total domains of support. For boys, both mother and father closeness were negatively associated with no one, and positively associated with total domains of support, while only mother closeness was related to other adult family support.

Parental social support and closeness were negatively related to adjustment outcomes. For boys and girls, father and mother closeness were significantly related to lower self-reported depression symptomology and drug use. There were differences in the extent that parental social support was statistically significantly related to adjustment outcomes by gender. For girls, mom support was significantly related to lower levels of depression and substance use (r = -.19, p < .05 and r = -.26, p < .01, respectively). Dad support was related only to lower levels of substance use (r = -.18, p < .05). Boys, on the other hand, reported significantly lower levels of depression when reporting morn and dad support (r = -.27,p < .01 and r = -.27,p < .01, respectively), but there were no statistically significant associations between substance uses and parental support. Boys and girls who reported going to morn and dad when personally troubled or upset were also more likely to report going to other adult family members. Other family members were not significantly related to the two adjustment outcomes.

Peers, whom many youth reported going to in times of need, showed no relationship to adjustment outcomes for girls. For boys, the negative relationship between peer support and depression was moderate (r = -.15, p < .05). Self-reported peer support showed no significant relationship to reports of substance use for boys and girls.

Comparison of adjustment outcomes to national norms. Table 3 shows the percentage of students who scored above the cutoff point for clinically depressive symptoms, the percentage of youth who have used drugs in the past year, and national norms for comparison purposes. In this affluent population, the data show that more affluent youth reported clinical level depressive symptomology than do a normative representative sample of youth their age (12% vs. 8% for girls; 9% vs. 7% for boys). Boys reported higher levels of substance use than did their female counterparts in this affluent population, and both girls and boys reported higher levels of substance use than a nationally representative sample of eighth graders. It is important to note that the percentage of youth using substances increases with age (DHHS, 2001). Since our sample of seventh graders already report higher levels of use than eighth graders nationwide, we can expect that by eighth grade these adolescents will report significantly higher substance use than will eighth graders nationwide. These results, taken together with those of Luthar and Becker (2002), showing significantly higher depression rates and substance use for seventh graders compared to sixth graders, suggest a trend of increasing maladjustment as these youngsters enter their adolescent years.