The moderating role of school engagement on the relationship between childhood adversity and latent profiles of mental and behavioral health among child welfare-involved adolescents

Background:Child welfare-involved youth are at increased risk for mental and behavioral health problems. There is a need to better understand the role of school engagement on mental and behavioral health problems for youth involved in the child welfare system. Objective: Our study examined whether school engagement buffers the relationship between adversity exposure and latent profiles of mental and behavioral health problems. Participants & Methods: This study used the National Survey on Child and Adolescent Well-Being II, a nationally representative sample of youth involved in the U.S. child welfare system. We restricted our sample to adolescents ages 11–17 years (n = 1,054, Mage = 13.62 years, SD = 1.86). We conducted latent profile analysis to identify the underlying patterns of mental and behavioral health problems; we used logistic regression to examine whether school engagement buffered the effect of childhood adversity on subgroup membership, adjusting for covariates. Results: We identified two latent profiles: “clinical level substance use and borderline externalizing problems” (13.6%) and “non-clinically significant problems” (86.4 %). In the logistic regression models, school engagement and age were associated with mental and behavioral health subgroup membership above and beyond the effects of childhood adversity and covariates. Older youth (OR = 1.50) had higher odds of being in the “clinical subgroup.” Higher levels of emotional (OR = 0.82) and behavioral school engagement (OR = 0.89) were associated with lower odds of being in the “clinical subgroup” than the “non-clinical subgroup.” However, the interaction between adversity and school engagement was not significant (p = .756). Conclusions: Our findings highlight the importance of prevention efforts aimed at increasing school engagement among child welfare-involved youth to reduce their risk of mental and behavioral health problems.