Depressive symptoms among mothers with young children—the role of family migration and social networks in Mexico

Abstract

Background

Women who remain in migratory sending communities as their family members migrate internationally are at risk for depression. Limited research examines the association between the number of absent household members and a woman’s mental health.

Aims

This study examines the association between residing in a migrant household and depressive symptoms for women in Mexico while accounting for social networks and social support.

Methods

Logistic regression analysis was employed using the Social Networks and Health Information Survey (SNHIS) (n = 320), a random household survey conducted in a medium-sized municipality in Guanajuato, Mexico.

Results

Multivariate results suggest that residing in a household with two or more migrants was associated with increased odds of depressive symptoms, while having immediate kin in the community reduced the odds of depressive symptoms. Social relationships in the community and social support were associated with reduced odds of depressive symptoms. Their inclusion in the models reduced the significance of but did not significantly mediate the association between residing in a household with multiple migrants and depressive symptoms.

Conclusions

Services aimed at improving women’s health should target women who reside in households with multiple migrants and focus on reducing the stress and mental health impacts associated with these relationships.

Keywords:

• Depression
• international migration
• social support
• social networks
• Mexico

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 To assess reliability, we computed alphas for the components of the scale related to positive affect (4 items) (alpha = 0.76) and those related to the depression score (16 items that measure depressed affect, somatic complaints, and interpersonal relations) (alpha = 0.90).

2 This includes spouses, blood relatives and in-laws. A total of 26 women reported having a migrant spouse out of the 59 women with migrant household members. Small size prohibits disaggregating the migrant household member effects according to relationship type.

3 This is the primary measure of socioeconomic status, as this survey did not collect data on household income. Having a primary education or less means that a woman has had 6 or fewer years of schooling and has been used in other research in Mexico using nationally representative data as an indicator of SES (see Nobles, 2013). Education is generally considered a meaningful indicator of socioeconomic status with 6–7 years as the mean educational level (Donato & Duncan, 2011; Nobles et al., 2015). Educational attainment is highly linked to income in Mexico (Legovini et al., 2002).

4 Using the STATA user-written command to test mediation in models with binary dependent variables, KHB, we assessed whether social support mediated the relationship between having 2 or more migrants in the household and social support. The results failed to reach significance at the p < 0.05 level (p = 0.07).