School racial/ethnic composition, effect modification by caring teacher/staff presence, and mid-/late-life depressive symptoms: findings from the Study of Healthy Aging in African Americans

For Black students in the United States, attending schools with a higher proportion of White students is associated with worse mental and physical health outcomes in adolescence/early adulthood. To our knowledge, no prior studies have evaluated the association between school racial/ethnic composition from kindergarten through grade 12 and later-life mental health. In a cohort of Black adults aged ≥50 years in Northern California who retrospectively reported (2017-2020) school racial/ethnic composition for grades 1, 6, 9, and 12, we assessed the association between attending a school with mostly Black students versus not and mid-/late-life depressive symptoms (8-item Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System (PROMIS) depression score, standardized to the 2000 US adult population) using age-, sex/gender-, southern US birth-, and parental education-adjusted generalized estimating equations, and assessed effect modification by the presence of a caring teacher/staff member. Levels of later-life depressive symptoms were lower among those who attended schools with mostly Black students in grades 1 and 6 (β = −0.12 [95% CI, −0.23 to 0.00] and β = −0.11 [95% CI, −0.22 to 0.00], respectively). In grade 6, this difference was larger for students without an adult at school who cared about them (β = −0.29 [95% CI, −0.51 to −0.07] vs β = −0.04 [95% CI, −0.17 to 0.09]). Among Black Americans, experiencing early schooling with mostly Black students may have later-life mental health benefits; this protective association appears more important for students without the presence of caring teachers/staff.