Williams Amanda L, Merten Michael J
Department of Child and Family Studies, University of Southern Mississippi, 118 College Dr. #5035, Hattiesburg, MS, 39406, USA,
J Youth Adolesc. 2014 Sep;43(9):1563-75. doi: 10.1007/s10964-014-0141-8. Epub 2014 Jun 8.
Family stress models illustrate how communities affect youth outcomes through effects on parents and studies consistently show the enduring effects of early community context. The present study takes a different approach identifying human agency during adolescence as a potentially significant promotive factor mediating the relationship between community, parenting, and mental health. While agency is an important part of resilience, its longitudinal effects are unknown, particularly based on gender and race/ethnicity. The purpose of this research was to model the long-term effects of community structural adversity and social resources as predictors of adolescent depressive symptom trajectories via indirect effects of parental happiness, parent-child relationships, and human agency. Latent growth analyses were conducted with 1,796 participants (53% female; 56% White) across four waves of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health spanning adolescence (Wave 1) through adulthood (Wave 4). The results identified agency as an important promotive factor during adolescence with long-term mental health benefits, but only for White and male participants. For these individuals, community social resources and the quality of the parent-child relationship were related to higher levels of agency and more positive mental health trajectories. Although community social resources similarly benefitted parenting and agency among females and non-White participants, there were no significant links between agency and depressive symptoms for these youth. The results suggest that agency remains an important, but poorly understood concept and additional work is necessary to continue unpacking its meaning for diverse groups of youth.
家庭压力模型阐释了社区如何通过对父母的影响来影响青少年的成长结果，并且研究一致表明早期社区环境具有持久影响。本研究采用了一种不同的方法，将青少年时期的个人能动性确定为一个潜在的重要促进因素，它在社区、养育方式和心理健康之间的关系中起中介作用。虽然能动性是恢复力的重要组成部分，但其纵向影响尚不清楚，尤其是基于性别和种族/民族的影响。本研究的目的是通过父母幸福感、亲子关系和个人能动性的间接影响，建立社区结构逆境和社会资源作为青少年抑郁症状轨迹预测因素的长期影响模型。对来自青少年健康全国纵向研究四个阶段（从青少年期的第1阶段到成年期的第4阶段）的1796名参与者（53%为女性；56%为白人）进行了潜在增长分析。结果表明，能动性是青少年时期一个重要的促进因素，对长期心理健康有益，但仅适用于白人和男性参与者。对于这些个体而言，社区社会资源和亲子关系质量与更高水平的能动性以及更积极的心理健康轨迹相关。尽管社区社会资源同样使女性和非白人参与者的养育方式和能动性受益，但这些青少年的能动性与抑郁症状之间没有显著联系。结果表明，能动性仍然是一个重要但理解不足的概念，需要开展更多工作来继续剖析其对不同青少年群体的意义。
