The purpose of this proposal is to investigate the influence of neighborhood context on emotional distress among youth. It is well known that neighborhood context influences individual behavior but it is less clear how specific neighborhood conditions - disadvantage and instability - shape adolescent mental health. We will explore cross-sectional associations among indicators of neighborhood disadvantage and instability (poverty, female-headed households, unemployment, residential mobility, racial heterogeneity, and crime) and emotional distress (depressed affect, anxiety, hopelessness, and suicide risk behaviors), longitudinal effects of change in emotional distress and intervention effects at post-program and at a 9-month follow-up. Specifically we ask: 1) Do neighborhood disadvantage and instability have a direct and/or moderating effect on adolescent emotional distress or change in emotional distress net of individual, family, and peer characteristics? 2) Do neighborhood disadvantage and instability have a direct and/or moderating effect on change in emotional distress net of individual, family, and peer characteristics? 3) Do neighborhood disadvantage and instability moderate the effects of the intervention net of individual, family, and peer characteristics? To address these questions multiple data sources will be linked together. The base dataset comes from the Reconnecting Youth (RY) prevention research studies, funded by NIDA, DOE, and CDC, providing a random sample of high school aged youth, stratified by high-risk, in the Seattle metropolitan area. The secondary data comes from the United States Census and the Seattle-area police departments. Individuals in the RY dataset will be linked to their census tracts and then local characteristics at the census tract-level will be added. Multilevel techniques will be used to assess the impact of neighborhood context on emotional distress, growth in emotional distress, and intervention effectiveness and adjust for natural clustering within neighborhoods. It is expected that adding neighborhood context will enhance our understanding of mental health patterns and change among teenagers and intervention efficacy. Findings from this project will inform future grant submissions to further explore the effects of neighborhood context on behavior. ? ? ? ?
