Book Description

Neighborhood context and parental influences are two major factors that are known to impact the mental health development of adolescents. Both factors have been extensively studied in either contributing or preventing youth from developing internalizing or externalizing mental health problems, such as depression and antisocial behavior (ASB). Specifically, researchers have investigated how perceived neighborhood safety, family cohesion, parental-engagement, and parent-child communication either serves as a protective factor or a risk factor for mental health problems within adolescents. This is consistent with Bronfenbrenner's Ecological Systems Theory (1977) that highlights the influence of numerous systems in adolescent mental health development, where appropriate levels of parental influences and a safe neighborhood will lead to positive mental health development. Neighborhood context and parental influences falls under the microsystem, which has a direct impact on adolescent mental health development due to these contexts being the 'immediate' social setting in which the adolescent is involved in (Lomas. 2015). Researchers have also documented that when youth develop mental health problems, racial/ethnic disparities exist in whether youth access mental health services to address those problems. Specifically, Latinx and African American youth demonstrate higher levels of unmet mental health need relative to their White counterparts, and these disparities often depend on the type of mental health problems (internalizing vs. externalizing) exhibited in youth. The current study examined the extent to which perceived neighborhood safety and parental influences were associated with mental health status and whether this led to receipt of mental health services and how that differed by problem type and ethnicity. The study goals were achieved using multigroup structural equation modeling in MPLUS, version 8.0 (Muthén & Muthén, 2017). Results revealed that the path between perceived neighborhood safety and externalizing ASB was significant. However, the path between perceived neighborhood safety and internalizing depressive symptoms was non-significant. The paths between parental influence and internalizing depressive symptoms as well as and externalizing ASB behaviors were also significant. Lastly, the path between internalizing depressive symptoms and mental health service use was significant but did not vary by race/ethnicity strongly based on beta coefficients. Results did illustrate that African American youth were likely to receive services when exhibiting depressive symptoms in comparison to Latinx and White youths. The current study has multiple policy implications; the study suggests that there should be interventions specifically targeted at improving neighborhood contexts and parenting characteristics as they can serve as protective factors against mental health status (Kruger et al., 2007; Yu et al., 2006). Additionally, research shows that there are racial/ethnic disparities in mental health service use; however based on the current study findings, there should also be an increased awareness of how these disparities vary by problem type (Martinez, Gudiño, & Lau, 2013).