Bivariate and cumulative patterns of risk and resilience among youth exposed to parental deployment.

• In Event: Physical and mental health across the lifecourse

Abstract

Aims:
Troubling elevations of mental health and behavioral challenges among youth in military families have been documented (MacDermid et al., 2016), although most of this work has neglected to consider factors associated with a reduction in adverse outcomes (NASEM, 2019). Guided by a risk and resilience perspective, we aim to understand associations between community, school, family, and peer/individual risk and resilience factors and well-being outcomes for youth exposed to parental combat deployment (PCD).
Methods:
Using self-report data from 9-12th grade participants in the Indiana Youth Survey who were exposed to PCD (n = 8,242; Gassman et al, 2018), we evaluated individual and cumulative models of risk and resilience with four outcomes.
Outcomes. Students indicated whether they felt sad for over two weeks, considered suicide within the past year, skipped class in the past month, or received a failing grade during the previous academic year.
Predictors.
Risk factors at the community domain included norms favorable to drug use and perceived availability of drugs. Family risk factors included family conflict, poor family management, parental attitudes favoring drug use, and parental attitudes favoring antisocial behavior. Individual/peer risk factors included attitudes favorable towards drug use, perceived risk of drug use, peer attitudes towards drug use, and peer rewards for antisocial involvement.
Resilience factors at the community domain included community rewards for prosocial involvement. School resilience factors included school opportunities and school rewards for prosocial involvement, and family resilience factors included family opportunities and rewards for prosocial involvement. Peer/individual resilience factors included interaction with prosocial peers.
Higher scores indicate more evidence of the factor. Following Arthur and colleagues (2007), cut scores were computed at a set interval above or below the median (.15*mean absolute deviation). Responses exceeding the cut score were coded 1 and all others were coded 0. Cumulative indices were separately constructed by summing cut scores for risk and resilience factors.
Analysis:
Outcomes were modeled separately with logistic regression models, first predicting outcomes from individual risk and resilience factors, and then from cumulative indices of risk and resilience factors. Predicted probabilities were plotted for statistically significant effects. Risk factors with odds ratios (OR) exceeding 2.0 (Ferguson, 2009) and resilience factors with ORs less than .50 were deemed practically significant. All models controlled for gender, age, race, and ethnicity and corrected standard errors for school-level nesting.
Results:
Risk and resilience factors in the family domain consistently demonstrated the strongest associations with suicidality and sadness, while interactions with prosocial peers was most strongly associated with reductions in truancy (Table 1). Significant effects emerged for associations between cumulative risk factors and sadness (panel A), suicidality (panel B), and academic outcomes (panel C). Cumulative protective factors were associated with sadness, suicidality, and academic failure (panel D).
Implications:
Risk and resilience factors exerted both individual and cumulative effects. Interactions with prosocial peers may be particularly relevant to reducing truancy behaviors, while cultivating family resilience factors may be associated with reductions in suicidality and sadness. Cumulative effects were particularly salient for feeling sad and suicidality.

Authors

• Elizabeth C. Coppola, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Presenting Author

• Keisha Bailey, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Non-Presenting Author

• Sharon L. Christ, Purdue University, West Lafayette
  Non-Presenting Author

• Shelley Macdermid Wadsworth, Purdue University
  Non-Presenting Author