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Intimate Partner Violence and Subsequent Depression: Examining the Roles of Neighborhood Supportive Mechanisms

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American Journal of Community Psychology

Abstract

This study examines the direct effects of neighborhood supportive mechanisms (e.g., collective efficacy, social cohesion, social networks) on depressive symptoms among females as well as their moderating effects on the impact of IPV on subsequent depressive symptoms. A multilevel, multivariate Rasch model was used with data from the Project on Human Development in Chicago Neighborhoods to assess the existence of IPV and later susceptibility of depressive symptoms among 2959 adult females in 80 neighborhoods. Results indicate that neighborhood collective efficacy, social cohesion, social interactions, and the number of friends and family in the neighborhood reduce the likelihood that females experience depressive symptoms. However, living in areas with high proportions of friends and relatives exacerbates the impact of IPV on females’ subsequent depressive symptoms. The findings indicate that neighborhood supportive mechanisms impact interpersonal outcomes in both direct and moderating ways, although direct effects were more pronounced for depression than moderating effects. Future research should continue to examine the positive and potentially mitigating influences of neighborhoods in order to better understand for whom and under which circumstances violent relationships and mental health are influenced by contextual factors.

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Notes

  1. However, the beneficial effects of collective efficacy on various outcomes may be limited or hindered when norms such as legal cynicism are taken into account (Emery et al. 2011; Kirk and Matsuda 2011).

  2. Staff at the Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research calculated NC-linked U.S. Census measures in order to ensure the confidentiality of the subjects of the PHDCN.

  3. Although the Community Survey collected information from all 343 NCs about neighborhood conditions via interviews with these residents, this study focuses only on those 80 NCs in which the participants of the LCS were nested.

  4. To arrive at the 2959, a total of 292 cases were deleted due to missing data. The only significant difference between our analysis sample and the eligible sample of female caregivers in a relationship was that our analysis sample had slightly fewer Hispanic women (p < .05). There were no significant differences on the main independent variable of interest or any other control variables.

  5. We control for neighborhood disadvantage in multilevel analyses because, relative to other structural conditions such as residential mobility or ethnic heterogeneity, disadvantage has been found to be the most consistent influence on both IPV and depression (Kim 2008; Mair et al. 2008; Pinchevsky and Wright 2012).

  6. Item response modeling techniques avoid the loss of data from missing responses to a set of questions or indicators (Osgood et al. 2002), take item difficulty into account (i.e., that some indicators of neighborhood constructs may be more difficult and less prevalent than others), and allow simultaneous estimation of the impact of individual-level influences (e.g., age, gender) on perceptions of these constructs (Sampson et al. 2005). The item response models used in this study ultimately provide the neighborhood-level of collective efficacy (or, social cohesion, or social interaction) after these issues have been accounted for.

  7. The same five items that measure social cohesion are also included in the collective efficacy measure. We believe this overlap is conceptually tolerable for the purposes of our inquiry. First, we were interested in the effect of collective efficacy on both depression and the IPV—depression relationship, and thus, needed to include the measure of collective efficacy as it has been examined in prior research (e.g., Sampson et al. 1997). Additionally, there has been some recent attention to the importance of social cohesion with regard to depression (Mair et al. 2010) as well as by itself as a facilitator of positive neighborhood behavior (e.g., informal social control, see Warner 2014). We were interested in its unique effects—apart from collective efficacy—and therefore chose to include a separate measure of social cohesion in our analyses. Collinearity did not present a problem, as we modeled collective efficacy and social cohesion separately.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of Nebraska, 6001 Dodge Street, 218 CPACS, Omaha, NE, 68182-0149, USA

    Emily M. Wright

  2. Department of Criminal Justice, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, 4505 South Maryland Parkway, Box 455009, Las Vegas, NV, 89154, USA

    Gillian M. Pinchevsky

  3. School of Criminal Justice, University of Cincinnati, 665H Dyer Hall, Cincinnati, OH, 45221, USA

    Michael L. Benson

  4. Department of Criminology & Criminal Justice, Niagara University, P.O. Box 1941, New York, NY, 14109-1941, USA

    Dana L. Radatz Ph.D.

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  1. Emily M. Wright
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  2. Gillian M. Pinchevsky
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  3. Michael L. Benson
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  4. Dana L. Radatz Ph.D.
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Correspondence to Emily M. Wright.

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Wright, E.M., Pinchevsky, G.M., Benson, M.L. et al. Intimate Partner Violence and Subsequent Depression: Examining the Roles of Neighborhood Supportive Mechanisms. Am J Community Psychol 56, 342–356 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-015-9753-8

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