Associations between socioeconomic status and mental health trajectories during early adolescence: Findings from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study

Objective. Low socioeconomic status (SES) during childhood is associated with higher levels of youth psychopathology. However, limited longitudinal work has examined the role of both household and neighborhood SES in shaping mental health trajectories over time using large population-based data. The goal of the present study was to characterize associations between SES and changes in mental health problems during early adolescence.Methods. We investigated independent and joint associations of household income-to-needs ratio, parent educational attainment, material hardship, and neighborhood disadvantage with internalizing, externalizing, and attention symptom trajectories using longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development Study. Youth-reported mental health was assessed across six time-points from age 10 to 13 years (M=10.4, SD=0.63 years at T1, N=9,488) and SES was assessed six months prior to T1.Results. Main effects indicated that high SES was associated with lower mental health symptoms. However, longitudinally, higher SES was associated with greater increases in mental health problems over time. A higher income-to-needs ratio predicted greater increases in internalizing, externalizing, and attention problems. Two-way interactions between SES indicators predicting changes in symptoms were non-significant.Conclusion. Our finding that youth from higher-SES backgrounds exhibited greater increases in mental health problems during early adolescence contrasts with findings from prior cross-sectional studies. However, mental health problems are on the rise and the landscape of risk for psychopathology is changing. More research is needed to understand how childhood SES contributes to risk and resilience for psychopathology during the transition to adolescence.