Perceived Social Status and Mental Health Among Adolescents

Increasing recognition that social status extends beyond more traditional measures of education, income, and occupation has led to greater research on other aspects of social status. This is particularly important for adolescents because the associations between such traditional measures and health are less consistent for this age group. The present study will examine the association between social status and mental health using multiple indicators of social status, namely parental education and two subjective measures (perception of the family’s place within society, and perception of the adolescent’s status within the school). Both subjective measures are slightly modified youth versions of the MacArthur Scale of Subjective Social Status. Data were derived from the 2015 Ontario Student Drug Use and Health Survey, a school-based survey of students in grades 7-12 in Ontario, Canada. This repeated cross-sectional survey of 10,426 students utilized a stratified two-stage cluster design. Results indicated that subjective indicators of social status were more strongly associated with mental health than parental education. It was also found that subjective indicators of social status sometimes varied in significance across mental health indicators, with perception of individual status within the school environment sometimes a stronger predictor than perception of family status. These findings highlight the complexity of the link between social status and health, as well as the need to examine diverse aspects of social status and health within research studies. Further research on subjective measures of social status may contribute to a greater understanding of the link between social status and health during adolescence.