Friendships and Family Support Reduce Subsequent Depressive Symptoms in At-Risk Adolescents

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Abstract

Background

Early life stress (ELS) consists of child family adversities (CFA: negative experiences that happened within the family environment) and/or peer bullying. ELS plays an important role in the development of adolescent depressive symptoms and clinical disorders. Identifying factors that may reduce depressive symptoms in adolescents with ELS may have important public mental health implications.

Methods

We used structural equation modelling and examined the impact of adolescent friendships and/or family support at age 14 on depressive symptoms at age 17 in adolescents exposed to ELS before age 11. To this end, we used structural equation modelling in a community sample of 771 adolescents (322 boys and 477 girls) from a 3 year longitudinal study. Significant paths in the model were followed-up to test whether social support mediated or moderated the association between ELS and depressive symptoms at age 17.

Results

We found that adolescent social support in adolescence is negatively associated with subsequent depressive symptoms in boys and girls exposed to ELS. Specifically, we found evidence for two mediational pathways: In the first pathway family support mediated the link between CFA and depressive symptoms at age 17. Specifically, CFA was negatively associated with adolescent family support at age 14, which in turn was negatively associated with depressive symptoms at age 17. In the second pathway we found that adolescent friendships mediated the path between peer bullying and depressive symptoms. Specifically, relational bullying was negatively associated with adolescent friendships at age 14, which in turn were negatively associated with depressive symptoms at age 17. In contrast, we did not find a moderating effect of friendships and family support on the association between CFA and depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

Friendships and/or family support in adolescence mediate the relationship between ELS and late adolescent depressive symptoms in boys and girls. Therefore, enhancing affiliate relationships and positive family environments may benefit the mental health of vulnerable youth that have experienced CFA and/or primary school bullying.

Related collections

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Author and article information

Contributors

Stephen E Alway: Role: Editor

Journal

Journal ID (nlm-ta): PLoS One

Journal ID (iso-abbrev): PLoS ONE

Journal ID (publisher-id): plos

Journal ID (pmc): plosone

Title: PLoS ONE

Publisher: Public Library of Science (San Francisco, CA USA )

ISSN (Electronic): 1932-6203

Publication date (Electronic): 4 May 2016

Publication date Collection: 2016

Volume: 11

Issue: 5

Electronic Location Identifier: e0153715

Affiliations

[1 ]Department of Psychiatry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

[2 ]Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, United Kingdom

[3 ]Department of Psychology, University of Bath, Bath, United Kingdom

[4 ]Department of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter, United Kingdom

[5 ]Department of Psychology, University of Berne, Berne, Switzerland

[6 ]School of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Dundee, Dundee, Scotland, United Kingdom

[7 ]Medical Research Council, Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, United Kingdom

West Virginia University School of Medicine, UNITED STATES

Author notes

Competing Interests: AlvH was supported by a Rubicon Fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research. IMG was supported by a Wellcome Trust programme grant, and grants from the NIHR Collaboration for Leadership in Applied Health Research, and Care (CLAHRC) for Cambridgeshire and Peterborough; IMG, AlvH, and JLG were supported through a grant from Kidscompany UK; PBJ was supported by Wellcome Trust grants, and National Institute for Health Research grant; RAK is supported by a Wellcome grant; JLG reports grants from ESRC, grants from MRC, grants, and personal fees from Royal College of Speech, and Language therapists. This does not alter the authors' adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials. The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Conceived and designed the experiments: IG PBJ TC AlvH. Performed the experiments: VD. Analyzed the data: ALvH JB VD MS MO. Wrote the paper: ALvH JG MS MO JBGL VD TC PBJ RAK IMG.

* E-mail: av391@ 123456cam.ac.uk

Article

Publisher ID: PONE-D-15-42268

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0153715

PMC ID: 4856353

PubMed ID: 27144447

SO-VID: d6bbc6fd-abe0-4429-b81e-cb7af24a43ec

License:

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

History

Date received : 24 September 2015

Date accepted : 1 April 2016

Page count

Figures: 5, Tables: 3, Pages: 20

Funding

Funded by: Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research

Award ID: 446-13-006

Award Recipient : Anne-Laura van Harmelen

Funded by: funder-id http://dx.doi.org/10.13039/100004440, Wellcome Trust;