Anxiety and Depression in Northern Plains American Indian Youth: Evidence for Resilience and Risk

ABSTRACT

Developing research collaborations with Indigenous communities to understand the expression and experience of anxiety and depression in American Indian (AI) youth and identifying protective and risk factors may be an important first step toward addressing AI health inequities. We used a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach to investigate anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms among AI youth living on a Northern Plains reservation. Moreover, we examined whether symptoms were related to two potential protective and risk factors, anxiety control beliefs and rumination. Our tribal research team collected multi-reporter survey data from 71 AI 3^rd-6^th graders (8-13-years-old; 62.3% female) attending a tribal school, their caregivers, and teachers. Results pointed toward resilience in this sample with 7.3% and 8.7% of AI youth reporting clinical levels of anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms, respectively, and on average experiencing symptoms “Sometimes.” There were moderate correlations between youth- and teacher-reported anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms, but no correlation with caregivers. Anxiety control beliefs were lower in older compared to younger AI youth and negatively related to youth-reported anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms, while rumination was positively related to youth-reported anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms and teacher-reported anxiety disorder symptoms. Age moderated relations between anxiety control beliefs and both youth-reported anxiety and depressive disorder symptoms with only significant relations found for older youth. Our findings are consistent with research showing resilience to internalizing problems in AI youth living on a reservation, but replication of their relations to anxiety control beliefs and rumination in other Indigenous peoples is warranted.

Acknowledgment

We want to acknowledge the many American Indian (AI) and non-AI people who worked long hours on this project and who were instrumental in making this research possible. To maintain the anonymity of the tribal community, we have not included the names of these individuals, but we are highly grateful for their unique and collective contributions.

Disclosure Statement

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

Data Availability Statement

The tribal community has a memorandum of understanding with Montana State University stating tribal ownership of the data used in this study. Only de-identified data can be shared outside the community with the permission of the tribal council and both tribal and MSU institutional review boards.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health under Award Number U54GM115371 and P20GM104417 (Centers of Biomedical Research Excellence or COBRE Award). The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.