Delinquency and Depression in the Transition to Adulthood: Toward a Theory of Deviant Adolescent Role Exits to Adult Disadvantage

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John HaganSES-0001753It is common for social scientists and public figures to speculate that feelings of social and psychological strain, usually described as despair or depression, are primary sources of youth crime, including elevated violence in ghetto streets and neighborhoods and sporadic violence in the hallways and classrooms of privileged suburban school. Yet there is little research that simultaneously considers problems of delinquency, violence and depression during adolescence. Speculation about unemployment among young "discouraged" workers similarly lacks a foundation in research that measures depressed feelings during adolescence and early adulthood. Data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) and follow-up third wave of this survey that will be used to test a model that considers the causal relationship between delinquency and depression and their linkage through troubled exits from adolescence to early problems in adulthood. The proposed model reverses conventional strain theory in asserting that delinquency acts as a causal antecedent to depression by increasing exposure to violence, counter-productive peer networks, substance abuse and legal stigmatization. The resulting depression leads in turn to deviant role exits from adolescence, including dropping out of school, running away from home, teen pregnancy, and thoughts about and attempts at suicide, all of which anticipate disadvantaged adult outcomes, such as joblessness, homelessness, single parenthood, morbidity and mortality. Preliminary work with the Add Health Survey has focused on measuring and testing the link between delinquency and depression during adolescence, and on the mediating role played by exposure to violence. Findings indicates that this influence is greater in the predicted direction from delinquency to depression than vice versa, with a power curve improving the fit of the relationship between these variables, and exposure to violence acting to mediate the effect of delinquency on depression in both linear and semi-logarithmic models. The first year of the research plan is built around the Wave I and II Add Health data, expanding the individual level analyses to include peer networks, disengagement from school and substance abuse, and advancing to multi-level model that consider the contextual effects of neighborhood, school, social network and aggregated individual level factors. The second year of the research plan focuses on the new Wave III Survey 2000 data which will provide crucial information about transitions from adolescence into adulthood. Most respondents will by this time be between 18 and 22 years of age. Those who were destined to make deviant adolescent role exits to adulthood, which are by definition premature, will now have done so. These individuals now will be moving though the initial stages of adulthood and our theory predicts that many will be experiencing resulting early adult disadvantages, which can be analyzed in relation to earlier delinquency and depression and ensuing risks and problematic exits from adolescence. In addition to the previous Wave I and II measures of exposure to mediating risks involving violence, peer, school and substance problems, the new Wave III Survey 2000 will retrospectively measure risks of legal labeling and resulting stigmatization. These items track contacts of respondents with the police and courts. The potential stigmatizing consequences of these contacts will be explored net of earlier self-reports of delinquency on subsequent depression, role exits and adult disadvantage.