Daily service use, depression, and social support among youth experiencing homelessness using ecological momentary assessment: The influence of youth characteristics

Numerous young people experience some form of homelessness each year and face various risks detrimental to their well-being and survival. Though some youth experiencing homelessness (YEH) use negative coping strategies such as substance use, positive coping, such as service utilization and social support, increase youths’ chances of exiting homelessness. We gathered survey and daily data from 169 YEH over 30 days to examine (1) whether youths’ characteristics were associated with service utilization and receiving different types of support, and (2) whether feeling more depressed/lonely was linked with receiving various types of support from social network members. Average marginal effects from multilevel logistic and linear probability regression models revealed that heterosexual youth were less likely to have used counseling and street outreach services compared with sexual minority youth. Moreover, heterosexual youth were also less likely to have received emotional, financial, and safety support compared with sexual minority youth. Additionally, more depressed/lonely youth were more likely to have received any support, emotional support, help with money, help with safety, and help with shelter from network members. Finally, reporting any type of support (e.g., emotional, financial) was found to decrease over the 30 days. Our findings have implications for targeted just-in-time interventions to help youth improve their well-being.