Neighborhood context, personality, and stressful life events as predictors of depression among African American women

Abstract

The authors tested neighborhood context, negative life events, and negative affectivity as predictors of the onset of major depression among 720 African American women. Neighborhood-level economic disadvantage (e.g., percentage of residents below the poverty line) and social disorder (e.g., delinquency, drug use) predicted the onset of major depression when controlling for individual-level demographic characteristics. Neighborhood-level disadvantage/disorder interacted with negative life events, such that women who experienced recent negative life events and lived in high disadvantage/disorder neighborhoods were more likely to become depressed than were those who lived in more benign settings, both concurrently and over a 2-year period. Neighborhood disadvantage/disorder can be viewed as a vulnerability factor that increases susceptibility to depression following the experience of negative life events.

Figure 1

Moderation of negative life events by neighborhood-level economic disadvantage/disorder in the prediction of the onset of major depression in the past 6 months among women who had not moved for financial reasons in the past 6 months. All data are from the Wave 1 interview. Regression lines are plotted for one standard deviation above the sample mean on neighborhood economic disadvantage/disorder and for one standard deviation below the sample mean on neighborhood economic disadvantage/disorder.

Figure 2

Moderation of negative life events by neighborhood-level economic disadvantage/disorder in the prediction of onset of major depression in the past 12 months among women who had not moved for any reason in the past 2 years. Life events and neighborhood economic disadvantage/disorder are from the Wave 1 interview. Cases were defined as women who experienced the onset of an episode of major depression in the past 12 months at Wave 2, who had not reported depression at the Wave 1 interview. Regression lines are plotted for one standard deviation above the sample mean on neighborhood economic disadvantage/disorder and for one standard deviation below the sample mean on neighborhood economic disadvantage/disorder.