Examining the Relationship between Intimate Partner Violence, Agency and Depression Among African American Emerging Adult Women

Background and Purpose: Intimate partner violence (IPV) is particularly pernicious among emerging adult African American women. Most young adults experience their initial IPV incident—physical, psychological, sexual, financial abuse and/or stalking—between the ages of 18 and 24 years old. Emerging adult African American women reflect the highest mortality and morbidity resulting from victimization. IPV often includes a unique interplay between victimization, depression, substance use, and lethality. Despite the imperative to understanding the influence of women's personal agency upon this commonly found constellation, a dearth of scholarship examines this interaction. We investigated personal agency, operationalized through comfort and confidence in condom negotiation, associated with substance use patterns and depressive symptoms among IPV-exposed young African American women, and describe implications for the development of culturally responsive interventions. We anticipate that African American women with more self-efficacy would report fewer depressive symptoms. Higher levels of IPV victimization are also expected to be related to more depressive symptoms.

Methods: We used longitudinal data from 184 participants in the N-LITEN study, which follows young African American women over a 12-month period. African American people who self-identified as women, aged 18-24 years. Demographic and other predictor variables included age, education, employment status (paid job), Agency, alcohol use, Alcohol Refusal Self-Efficacy, marijuana use, and IPV. Age, marijuana use problems, Alcohol Refusal Self-Efficacy, Agency, and IPV were treated as continuous variables. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to examine the association of agency, alcohol use, and IPV on depression status (presence and no depression).

Results: Our logistic regression of sense of agency, IPV victimization, alcohol refusal self-efficacy, and the outcome of depressive symptoms found that emerging adults who experienced IPV reported more depressive symptoms than their counterparts. Findings further indicate that self-efficacy and agency are protective factors experiencing negative mental health outcomes associated with IPV victimization. Findings imply the need for strengthening the sense of agency and self-efficacy among ethnic minority women as a means of reducing poor outcomes.

Conclusion: Self-efficacy and agency are protective factors from experiencing negative mental health outcomes resulting from IPV victimization. Study findings provide implications that may assist in the promotion of positive youth development among vulnerable populations. Specifically, practitioners working with ethnic minority women should focus on strengthening/increasing a sense of agency and self-efficacy among this population to prevent/minimize negative outcomes.