The Social Determinants of Emotional and Behavioral Problems in Adolescents Experiencing Early Puberty

Copyright © 2023 Society for Adolescent Health and Medicine. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved..

PURPOSE: Earlier pubertal timing is an important predictor of emotional and behavioral problems during adolescence. The current study undertook a comprehensive investigation of whether the social environment can buffer or amplify the associations between pubertal timing and emotional and behavioral problems.

METHODS: Research questions were examined in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study, a large population representative sample in the United States. We examined interactions between pubertal timing and the shared effects of a range of proximal and distal social environmental influences (i.e., parents, peers, schools, neighborhoods, socioeconomic status) in 10- to 13-year-olds.

RESULTS: Results revealed significant interaction between timing and proximal social influences (i.e., the "microsystem") in predicting emotional and behavioral problems. In general, adolescents with earlier pubertal timing and unfavorable (high levels of negative and low levels of positive) influences in the microsystem exhibited greater problems. Both males and females exhibited such associations for rule-breaking problems, while females alone exhibited associations for depressive problems. Results also illustrate the relative strength of each social context at moderating risk for emotional and behavioral problems in earlier versus later pubertal maturers.

DISCUSSION: These findings highlight the importance of proximal social influences in buffering vulnerability for emotional and behavioral problems related to earlier puberty. Findings also illustrate the broad implications of latent environmental factors, reflecting common variance of multiple social influences that typically covary with one another.

Medienart:

E-Artikel

Erscheinungsjahr:

2024

Erschienen:

2024

Enthalten in:

Zur Gesamtaufnahme - volume:74

Enthalten in:

The Journal of adolescent health : official publication of the Society for Adolescent Medicine - 74(2024), 4 vom: 21. März, Seite 674-681

Sprache:

Englisch

Beteiligte Personen:

Vijayakumar, Nandita [VerfasserIn]
Youssef, George [VerfasserIn]
Bereznicki, Hannah [VerfasserIn]
Dehestani, Niousha [VerfasserIn]
Silk, Timothy J [VerfasserIn]
Whittle, Sarah [VerfasserIn]

Links:

Volltext

Themen:

Adolescence
Behavioral problems
Emotional problems
Journal Article
Pubertal timing
Social environment

Anmerkungen:

Date Completed 25.03.2024

Date Revised 25.03.2024

published: Print-Electronic

Citation Status MEDLINE

doi:

10.1016/j.jadohealth.2023.06.025

funding:

Förderinstitution / Projekttitel:

PPN (Katalog-ID):

NLM361630220