Summary

•    Research has indicated that a low socioeconomic status (SES) is a risk factor for mental health problems among those between the age of 12 and 24 in Australia.
•    The fully linear relationship between SES and mental health outcomes is not supported - the interactions are complicated and brought about by factors such as.
o    Developmental timing (Critical period of exposure is at childhood)
o    Under SES, particular elements (income/deprivation should be more prophetic than education level)
o    Gender (is expressed stronger for females)
o    Ethnicity and cultural specificity
•    Causative links between low SES and youth mental health problems could be attributed to any of the following pathways.
o    Chronic stress exposure
o    Poverty as related to the adversity and trauma.
o    Minimized stimulation of the cognitive functions and distorted connection.
o    Deprivation of social/material resources to such an extent.
o    Psychosocial impacts of sidelining.
•    Neuroscientific findings indicate that the social and economic conditions of the environment are biologically engraved.
o    Interfering with the brain development during the sensitive periods.
o    Inducing epigenetic changes
o    Affecting stress hormone systems
•    Low SES breaks coping resources over to many domains and simultaneously over time ("cumulative loads").
o    High poverty areas, low-quality housing, and unavailability of community resources, would be a consideration.
o    Stressful school environments
o    Frayed family dynamics
o    Having quality healthcare access as a barrier.
•    Although the impact is not directional, the socioeconomic disadvantage and marginalization hinder the development of a favorable environment for resilience.
•    Disrupting the cycle of poverty across generations, strengthening community resources, and positive youth development should be the key steps.

Introduction

Adolescent mental health problems are major public health issue in Australia and for the rest of the world too. One in every four Australian youth now suffer from mental health difficulties, with anxiety, depression, and behavior being the most prevalent among them (Jorm & Kitchener, 2021).

The consequences of mental ill health in adolescents and young adults can extend widely to educational attainment, employment prospects, physical health and life satisfaction into adulthood. Acknowledging the primary mechanisms that determine the path of mental health for young people is thus an essential element of any preventive and early intervention strategy.

Socioeconomic status (SES) has a lasting impact on the mental and physical outcomes of health (Vu et al., 2018). Among the factors being studied is the relationship between low income of the family, parents’ educational levels and occupational status and the likelihood thereafter of mental illness onset and severity over a lifetime. Nevertheless, the specific mechanisms through which economic deprivation 'get into the skin' to interact with mental well-being are still being discovered. These might be increased stress vulnerability, limited or jacked up access to health care and community services, neighbourhood deprivation, and acquiring unhealthy coping behaviours (Landstedt et al., 2016).

For young people, low SES can interfere with their mental health if it disrupts developmental processes, as attachment, cognitive stimulation, and acquisition of social-emotional abilities (Dray et al., 2016). Having poverty, residential instability, and family financial problems since childhood and youth can all be harmful to the future lives. Alternately, the higher SES families may possess connections with therapist, tutor, extracurricular activities and use them to build up resilience when mental health stress is encountered.

The literature review will examine in detail the existing scientific evidence about the link between socioeconomic indicators and mental health outcomes of children, adolescents, and young adults in Australia. The review will examine which SES indicators (i.e. income, education, employment status) show strongest effect, how age, gender and ethnicity (and other demographic variables) could potentially moderate this relationship and causal pathways assumed. Although it is widely accepted by the public that there is the a strongly established gradient between SES and mental health at the population level, key gaps remain in identifying the complex relationships at an individual and family level during the early formative years of development.

Refining a more precise, contextualized cognition of these processes could be instrumental in identifying the vulnerable youth groups in Australia and suggesting the most targeted interventions and help to these groups. In the context of worsening trends in the area of rising psychological distress in the youth population of the country, outlining the role played by socioeconomic factors may prove to be key to countering these disturbing tendencies and developing thriving mental health in each and every community.

Discussion of Findings

This review has summarized key research on the relations of SES and mental health status among children, adolescents, and young adults from Australasian and global academic literature. In short, the data clearly shows that social background is a robust risk factor for psychological problems and disorders causing during this age. But socioeconomic disadvantage is not the main factor that causes mental health outcomes to appear linearly or in a similar way. Differing developmental phase, gender, ethno-cultural aspects, and particular components of SES could be involved in the relationships' change.

With regard to development periods, a dominant concept is that the childhood period where economic hardships and low socioeconomic status are experienced may have higher significance and predict later mental health vulnerabilities. Apart from that, another Australian longitudinal study unveiled that a one-time bullying occurred at age 14-15 had the effect of an earlier childhood poverty in bullying activities through early adulthood depression and anxiety (Terhaag et al., 2021).

Studies done elsewhere show that sensitive periods such as fetal growth and first few years are the time when the environmental exposures from SES can have long-lasting effects on stress regulation systems and brain maturation, which in turn cause cumulative mental disorders (Islam et al., 2023). Such studies emphasize the critical role of mitigation measures aimed at families from lower SES groups with infants and toddlers.

Along with many researches, it is shown that SES has an impact on the mental health background from adolescence to adulthood transition. Particularly the well-known that found elevated risks for mood disorders, substance abuse, and self-harm behaviors occurring into mid-20s in the youth coming from higher SES backgrounds (Hashmi et al., 2021).

Cumulative financial costs, the problem of residential instability, lack of services available, and diminished self-efficacy, may all lead to more harmful strategies and to the prolongation of the stress process. Others maintain that financial insecurity throughout puberty which is usually a developmentally fluctuating period may alter brain development that leads to mental health vulnerability (Tomaszewski et al., 2020).

As to the SES components, low household income, material deprivation and financial difficulties are identified as the most prominent factors contributing to mental health problems throughout different studies. Effects were more complex - despite the fact that lower parental education often coexisted with other SES disparities, some cases of the high-achieving, upwardly-mobile youth were observed who did not conform to the expected mental health inequalities.

May be so, as it signifies protective factors comprising of intense social support, engaged parenting, and personal/cultural resources. For instance, youth from families with high socioeconomic levels and higher education levels displayed a lower risk in most aspects. It is interesting that the risks often were most elevated among the youths from the families experiencing social mobility downturn compared to the those from inter-generational and chronic poverty (Occhipinti et al., 2021). That fits to theories which explain the disrupting factor as the result of acute economic worries and the relatively low status in relation to others.

Gender appeared in the role of a key moderating variable. Social economic class (SES)-based mental health disparities were not gender-specific in this age cohort. Nevertheless, the young female Australians and girls depicted higher levels of these disorders, including depression, anxiety, and PTSD, according to Rice et al. (2021).

This could be due to the unfolding of accumulated socioeconomic deprivation, stress and trauma overlaid with female specific hormonal and reproductive issues. Yet, some research points at a higher prevalence of externalizing disorders like ADHD and conduct problems in lower SES boys that might be stemming from stronger social marginalization and underusage of treatment options.

Studies findings about race/ethnicity were more complex. In the case of Australia, Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander youth have been the ones that suffer the most. They are the population group with the highest mental health burdens that are on the rise over time (Gibson et al., 2024).

Many of these issues seem to be associated with the trans-generational impacts of systemic racism, oppression and socioeconomic deprivation, which consistently leads to disproportionate rates of poverty, community violence exposure, substance abuse, and trauma among these groups that are continuously victimized.

However, the data showed that higher risks for certain internalizing disorders appeared among some children and adolescents from higher SES immigrant and non-white ethnic minority families compared to low SES non-immigrant white peers. It can be related to culture support networks and the work ethic values that we are brought up with like education and the prosperity of the next generation.

Through seeking causal pathways each discipline, the evidence supports the chronic stress exposure, poverty-related adversity, lowered cognitive stimulation, insecure attachment patterns as well social/material resources availability as the major mechanisms between low SES and mental health vulnerabilities. Neuroscience studies have revealed SES-related anatomical and functional brain differences, including aspects of emotional regulation and executive function, that occur during brain development through critical periods (Yaple & Yu, 2020).

The possible creation of epigenetic changes by stressful socioeconomic conditions may serve as the origins of mental health disorders at the molecular level. While it may seem youth are resilient on the outside, life "transfers loads" from economic adversities which tax the coping resources over time and make the young ones wither away (Tooley et al., 2020).

It links exposure to risk factors in several areas of youth’s life leading to relatively more risk exposure and less protection. Ethnic minority neighborhoods with high poverty, crime, substandard housing, no green space and community resources become the source of frustration and distraction from healthy development (O'Connor et al., 2022).

Schools turn into more stressful places and home relations get more screwed when economic security is not available. Denial of high-quality healthcare (including psychological care) caused by health system expenses and other obstacles leads to a reinforcement of the problem (Radunz et al., 2021). Discrimination, loss of a sense of mastery over life, and a diminished sense of self-esteem and belonging resulting from various marginalization experiences may be particularly harmful to the mental well-being of youth.

In general, it emerges that socioeconomic inequality, entrenched in the structural social inequities, become part of an individual, both physically and mentally, through multi-level mechanisms that function over the early years of life.

Although some youth show amazingly high resilience in the face of hardship, there is an overwhelming amount of evidence which highlights the need for strong public health initiatives to alleviate economic hardships, disrupt generational cycles of disadvantage, and create community interventions to develop supportive environments for better mental health outcomes.

Conclusion

It is revealed that this literature review has gone through the main research studies examining the level of how socioeconomic factors influence the mental health status of young people in Australia. The evidence strongly indicates that low socioeconomic status is a consistent risk factor for psychological distress and mental disorders at ages ranging from childhood to young adulthood.

However, things are not so straightforward because relationships emerge as moderated by developmental timing, the specific SES components or variables involved, gender, ethnicity and other factors within the environment.

The risk of permanent brain and mental damage in early childhood due to poverty and harsh economic conditions lies in the likelihood of disruption of some fundamental development brain processes, changes in brain maturation and stress regulation, and programming of mental health vulnerabilities.

Household income below a certain level, material deprivation and financial strain were the most common factors influencing mental health, but the effects of parental education depended on various factors. Beside that, economic insecurity throughout the transitional periods such as adolescence and emerging adulthood can have the same effects.

Socioeconomically oppressed females have always been those that have the highest rates of internalizing problems like anxiety and depression. In contrast, it was other people's problems that were more prevalent among males of low SES. Ethnicity-wise, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander youth had such a big multiple burden which could be attributable to the intergenerational impacts that were brought about by oppression and marginalization. Among the wealthy ethnic minority groups, there was the evidence that some of them enjoyed mental health superiority over low SES white native Americans.

Research suggests the role of chronic stress, poverty-related adversity, decreased cognitive stimulation & attachment security, low access to resources, and psychosocial stressors in linking low SES to youth mental health problems. The neurobiological researches have shown that the socioeconomic factors can be a complex one because of the epigenetic changes and the brain development during the sensitive period.

Unbeknownst to the mechanism determining outcomes, the review provides insights of how socioeconomic deprivation saps the coping resources of young people in many aspects of life over a long period of time. Such cycle of poverty disrupting, community supports enhancement and promotion of positive youth development are essential strategies towards mental health equity.

Nevertheless, the authors underline the lack of some precision when modeling causal relationships and environmental intermediaries that link SES to the onset of psychopathology. However, multi-dimensional research on this front still demands priority for more efficient prevention programs targeted at all Australian youth.
 

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References

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