Exploring Trajectories of Social-Emotional Risk and Resilience for Rural Youth

Griese, Emily

Abstract

Bullying, or more broadly peer victimization, is a wide-spread epidemic impacting the health of our youth today. Although there has been significant work focused on studying peer victimization and its impact on mental health outcomes including feelings of depression and suicidal ideation, few studies have examined these processes among rural and American Indian (AI) youth ? populations that have evident disparities both in risk for peer victimization as well as poor mental health outcomes. Even more, the studies that have examined peer victimization trajectories and associated outcomes have primarily taken a deficits-based focus, identifying cumulative risk and informing intervention efforts of the need to decrease negative behaviors. Critical to driving this field forward is working to understand the variations in peer victimization risk given the presence of protective factors occurring parallel with these trajectories. In light of this need, the goal of the proposed project is to identify distinct trajectories of peer victimization and relevant protective factors present for rural and AI youth and to examine the impact these early trajectories have on mental health outcomes from late childhood to early adolescence. The proposed project will utilize advanced person-centered modeling to identify distinct classes of rural and AI youth who may be at higher or lower risk for adverse outcomes based on their co-occurring levels of peer victimization and relevant protective factors. Importantly, the second focus of the proposed project will be to examine the association between these subgroups of youth at varying levels or risk or resilience and the impact it has on feelings of depression, loneliness, and suicidal ideation. Fourth and fifth grade students will be recruited from four highly rural school districts with student populations of nearly 40% American Indian. Data will be collected over three time points to provide longitudinal information on the developmental trajectories of student's peer relationships and potential protective factors. This work is highly significant given its specific focus on early trajectories of protective and risk factors consistently associated with later suicidal ideations and behaviors. It is novel in its longitudinal, person- centered approach to examining parallel (simultaneously, within the same model) risk and protective trajectories specifically among rural and AI youth. Our project outcomes will help define critical aspects needed for the creation of new intervention efforts specific to these communities and cultures.

Public Health Relevance

This project builds on emergent findings that suggest while many bullying interventions have been found to be relatively ineffective, prevention efforts that have demonstrated success have focused on sources of resilience within peer relations. None of these interventions to date, however, have focused on rural and/or American Indian youth. The current study will work to inform community-specific efforts to develop effective interventions by identifying important heterogeneity among potentially at-risk and/or resilient rural and American Indian youth and its impact on their associated mental health outcomes in late childhood and early adolescence.