Better Support Services for Better Mental Health?—The Case of Depression among Parents on Welfare

There is an increasing concern that parental mental health may have far-reaching undesirable consequences for children. However, factors impeding parental resiliency to overcome mental illness have been less forthcoming in the literature. The present study aimed to investigate independent and interactive impacts of risk and protective factors influencing depression among parents receiving welfare.

The study used panel data from the first two waves (Wave 1 in 2004 and Wave 2 in 2006) of the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. The analytic sample included 1204 parents of children aged 4 - 5 years old who participated in both of the waves and received government payments as their main income source in Wave 1. At Wave 2, twenty seven percent of all participant parents had income support as their main income source, and one-third of these parents reported having depressive symptoms during the 4 weeks prior to the interview.

In hierarchical regression analysis, specific stressful events in the past 12 months (relationship breakdown, financial hardship, substance abuse, and death of a love one) had emerged as significant risk factors of depression. Parenting self-efficacy, timely access to support services and neighborhood belonging were found to be significant protective factors of depression. The most unique and key finding was that parents experiencing stressful events were less likely to report depression if they had adequate access to support services at times of adversity, and these results remained largely unchanged above and beyond the effects of the control variables.

In conclusion, these findings have important implications for inculcating resilience in families on welfare, in particular through driving an institutional change that is responsive to ongoing and emergent needs. It is important that policy and health services delivery are designed in conjunction to provide maximum support for disadvantaged families at times of adversity. Besides, investing in early diagnosis and intervention for depression with targeted and adequate support for one generation will surely promote healthy developmental outcomes for the next.

Article by Eliza Ahmed, from Australian National University, Canberra, Australia.

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Image by Loizos Nikolaou, from Flickr-cc.