Associations Between Socioeconomic Status and Mental Health Trajectories During Early Adolescence: Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study

Associations Between Socioeconomic Status and Mental Health Trajectories During Early Adolescence: Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study

Poverty--Psychological aspects--United States

Divyangana Rakesh, John Flournoy, Katie A. McLaughlin

JCPP Advances

2025

PsyArXiv

Research paper

English

26929384

United States

Open Access

Objective. Low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood is associated with higher levels of youth psychopathology. However, limited longitudinal work has examinedthe role of both household and neighborhood SES in shaping mental health trajectories over timeusing large population-based data.The goal of the present study was to characterize associations between SES andchanges in mental health problems during early adolescence.Methods. Weinvestigatedindependent and jointassociations of householdincome-to-needsratio, parent educational attainment, material hardship,andneighborhood disadvantagewith internalizing, externalizing, and attention symptom trajectoriesusing longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Youth-reported mental health was assessed across six time-points from age 10 to 13 years(M=10.4, SD=0.63years at T1,N=9,488) and SES was assessed six months prior to T1.Results.Main effectsindicated that high SES was associated with lower mental health symptoms. However, longitudinally, higherSESwas associated with greater increases in mental health problemsover time. A higher income-to-needs ratio predicted greater increases in internalizing, externalizing,and attention problems.Two-way interactions between SES indicators predicting changes in symptoms were non-significant.Conclusion.Our findingthat youth from higher-SES backgrounds exhibited greater increases in mental health problems during early adolescence contrasts with findings from prior cross-sectional studies. However, mental health problems are on the rise and the landscape of risk for psychopathologyis changing. More research is needed to understand howchildhood SES contributes torisk and resilience for psychopathologyduring the transition to adolescence.

Haley Lesemann