Socioeconomic status and Aboriginal cultural status are believed to be key risk indicators of mental health status in youth.<p>The main purpose of the study was to explore the role of Aboriginal cultural status as an independent risk indicator associated with depressed mood after controlling for other covariates; including socioeconomic status. <p>Methods<br>
A population based cross sectional survey was used. Every student in grades 5-8 in Saskatoon was asked to complete a short self-report questionnaire in their classroom in February of 2007. Depressed mood was measured with a validated depression scale (CES-D-12).<p>Results<br>
In total, 4093 adolescents completed the study questionnaire. For youth whose parents were of Aboriginal cultural status, the prevalence rate of moderate or severe depressed mood was 21.6% in comparison to 8.9% for youth whose parents were Caucasian (RR=2.43; 95% CI 1.92-3.08).<p>
In the final adjusted multivariate logistic regression model, moderate or severe depressed mood was more likely to be associated with female gender (OR=1.665; 95% CI 1.179-2.352), having low self esteem (OR=3.185; 95% CI 2.084-4.870), feeling like an outsider at school (OR=3.364; 95% CI 2.386-4.743), being bullied within the past year (OR=1.879; 95% CI 1.278-2.761), alcohol usage (OR=2.518; 95% CI 1.730-3.666), high levels of anxiety (OR=22.171; 95% CI 14.170-34.960), suicide ideation (OR=3.734; 95% CI 2.502-5.572), being hungry some or most of the time (OR=2.071; 95% CI 1.357-3.162) and parents having a lower education status (OR=1.503; 95% CI 1.066-2.120). Although Aboriginal cultural status was strongly associated with moderate or severe depressed mood after cross tabulation and stratification, Aboriginal cultural status was not associated with higher levels of depressed mood after full adjustment for other covariates in the final multivariate model (OR= 1.132; 95% CI 0.682-1.881).<p>Conclusions<br>The results demonstrate that Aboriginal cultural status has a more limited and statistically non-significant association with moderate or severe depressed mood in youth after controlling for other covariates. There is a need to transfer the results of this research to the Saskatoon community to allow policy makers and the public at large to know that prevention of disparity in mental health is possible because the determinants of mental health (i.e., education) are now modifiable (in comparison to Aboriginal cultural status).
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:USASK/oai:usask.ca:etd-08142008-152934 |
| Date | 20 August 2008 |
| Creators | Lemstra, Mark |
| Contributors | Patten, Scott, Mousseau, Darrell D., D`Arcy, Carl, Crossley, Margaret, Bowen, Rudy, Shaw, Syed, Tempier, Raymond |
| Publisher | University of Saskatchewan |
| Source Sets | University of Saskatchewan Library |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://library.usask.ca/theses/available/etd-08142008-152934/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Saskatchewan or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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