The Associations between Socioeconomic Status and Childhood and Adult Psychosocial Experiences among Men Living in El Paso, Texas

BACKGROUND: Substantial evidence indicates that low levels of Socioeconomic Status (SES) can have adverse psychosocial health implications in early childhood that can persist into adulthood. While there is extensive research about this relationship very little is known about the relationship between SES characteristics and adult psychosocial burden among Hispanic men. OBJECTIVE: This research aims to explore the associations between SES characteristics and childhood adverse experiences, adult perceived stress burden, and depressive symptoms among Hispanic men living in El Paso, Texas. METHODS: This research used data from a cross-sectional study of 100 adult men residing in El Paso, Texas in 2018. Participants completed a series of self-reported questions, including the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE), a short 10-item scale (abuse problems, parental separation or divorce, and four types of caregiver dysfunctional exposures such as witnessing domestic violence, parental mental illness, and parental incarceration), psychosocial feelings of perceived stress burden, depressive symptoms and SES characteristics described as education, income, employment status, and health insurance coverage. This research proposed that low levels of educational attainment, annual household income, employment status would have an inverse relationship with psychosocial factors (ACE, perceived stress burden and depressive symptoms). To identify self-reported responses of ACE, perceived stress burden and depressive symptoms questions, a score was created for each dependent variable. After adjusting for certain demographic characteristics (i.e., age, ethnicity), linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between SES characteristics and psychosocial experiences (ACE, perceived stress burden, and depressive symptoms,), generating six models. RESULTS: 1) The top reported ACE score among Hispanics was between 1–3, indicating the score of self-reported adverse childhood experiences; the top PHQ-2 score reported by Hispanics was between 1–3, indicating the number of self-reported experiences of depressive symptoms within the past two weeks; and the top reported score for perceived stress burden among Hispanics was zero, indicating not having had a stressful problem lasting more than 6 months. 2) After controlling for certain demographic and psychosocial factors, two linear regression models were statistically significant, perceived stress burden and depressive symptoms. CONCLUSION: Results for the linear regression did not show statistically significant associations in all the models, however, there was some evidence that household income and employment status were associated with ACE, however, the models were not significant, and health insurance with perceived stress burden, were statistically significant, consistent with published literature but given the low R-squared values, which suggest that the models really don’t explain much variation in the dependent variables and a large number of models increases the threat of false positive (type 1 error). RECOMMENDATIONS: Understanding the relationship between SES and psychosocial factors could give health care providers a deeper understanding of how to help patients experiencing psychosocial burden. Moreover, more population-based longitudinal studies are needed to clarify the mechanisms leading to Hispanic men’s psychosocial burden