Journal of mental health & clinical psychology最新文献

Background: Education, employment, and marital status are among the main socioeconomic status (SES) indicators that are associated with subjective health and happiness. The effects of these SES indicators may, however, be different for various demographic groups.

Aims: To understand if SES indicators differently impact men and women, we tested gender differences in the effects of education, employment, and marital status on the subjective health and happiness of American adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study used data of the General Social Survey (GSS), a series of nationally representative surveys between 1972 and 2018 in the US. Our analytical sample included 65,814 adults. The main independent variables were education attainment, marital status, and employment. Outcomes were self-rated health (SRH) and happiness measured using single items. Age and year of the study were covariates. Gender was the moderator.

Results: Overall, high education, being employed, and being married were associated with better SRH and happiness. We, however, found significant interactions between gender and educational attainment, marital status, and employment on the outcomes, which suggested that the effect of high education and marital status were stronger for women. In comparison, the effect of employment was stronger for men. Some inconsistencies in the results were observed for SRH compared to happiness.

Conclusions: In the United States, while education, employment, and marital status are critical social determinants of subjective health and happiness, these effects vary between women and men. Men's outcomes seem to be more strongly shaped by employment, while women's outcomes are more strongly shaped by education and marital status.

Background: A large body of empirical evidence on Minorities' Diminished Returns (MDRs) suggests that educational attainment shows smaller health effects for Blacks compared to Whites. At the same time, economic strain may operate as a risk factor for a wide range of undesired mental and physical health outcomes in Black communities.

Aim: The current study investigated the combined effects of education and economic strain on the following five health outcomes in Black older adults in underserved areas of South Los Angeles: depressive symptoms, number of chronic diseases, pain intensity, self-rated health, and sick days.

Methods: This cross-sectional study included 619 Black older adults residing in South Los Angeles. Data on demographic factors (age and gender), socioeconomic characteristics, economic strain, health insurance, living arrangement, marital status, health behaviors, depressive symptoms, pain intensity, number of chronic diseases, sick days, and self-rated health were collected. Five linear regressions were used to analyze the data.

Results: Although high education was associated with less economic strain, it was the economic strain, not educational attainment, which was universally associated with depressive symptoms, pain intensity, self-rated health, chronic diseases, and sick days, independent of covariates. Similar patterns emerged for all health outcomes suggesting that the risk associated with economic strain and lack of health gain due to educational attainment are both robust and independent of type of health outcome.

Conclusion: In economically constrained urban environments, economic strain is a more salient social determinant of health of Black older adults than educational attainment. While education loses some of its protective effects, economic strain deteriorates health of Black population across domains. There is a need for bold economic and social policies that increase access of Black communities to cash at times of emergency. There is also a need to improve the education quality in the Black communities.

Background: Considerable research has suggested that race and age are two major determinants of brain development, including but not limited to development of the prefrontal cortex (PFC). Minorities' Diminished Returns (MDRs), however, suggests that race (as a proxy of racism) may interact with various determinants of human and brain development. Minimal knowledge, however, exists on whether age and race also interact on shaping PFC response to threat among American children.

Purpose: Using data from a task-based functional brain imaging study and considering race as a sociological rather than a biological construct, we investigated combined effects of race and age on prefrontal cortical (PFC) response to threat. We explored racial heterogeneities in the association between age and PFC response to threat by comparing Black and White children.

Methods: This study used the task-based functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) data from the Adolescents Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study, a national, landmark, multi-center brain imaging investigation of 9-10 years old children in the US. The primary outcomes were mean beta weights of n-back runs measuring PFC response to threating versus neutral face contrast in the following regions of interest (ROIs): left hemisphere-lateral orbito-frontal, left hemisphere -superior-frontal, right hemisphere -caudal middle frontal, and right hemisphere -superior frontal cortex. The independent variable was age. Covariates were sex, ethnicity, family socioeconomic status, and neighborhood socioeconomic status. Race was the focal moderator. To analyze the data, we used linear regression models without and with interactions and SES as covariates.

Results: We included 5,066 9-10 years old children. Age and race did not show direct effects on PFC response to threatening relative to neutral faces. While ethnicity, sex, and socioeconomic status were controlled, age and race showed a systematic interaction on PFC response to threatening relative to neutral faces.

Conclusions: For American children, race and age do not have direct effects but multiplicative effects on PFC response to threat. The results may be reflective of social inequalities in how Black and White children are socialized and developed. The results are important given the role of the PFC in regulating the limbic system response to threat. Coordinated work of the limbic system and PFC is a core element of children's behavioral and emotional development. Future research is needed on how social stratification and racism shape emotion processing and regulation of American children in response to threat.

Background: Educational attainment and income are two socioeconomic status indicators with strong protective effects against cigarette smoking. Marginalization-related Diminished Returns, however, refer to less than expected protective effects of socioeconomic status indicators for the members of the racial and ethnic minority groups, particularly Blacks and Hispanics, compared to non-Hispanic Whites.

Aim: Borrowing data from a nationally representative study in the US, this study tested whether racial and ethnic differences exist in the effects of educational attainment and poverty status on cigarette smoking of American adults.

Methods: This cross-sectional study entered 28,329 adult participants of the Population Assessment of Tobacco and Health (PATH; 2013). Both educational attainment and poverty status were the independent variables. The dependent variable was current hookah smoking. Age, gender, and region were the covariates. Race and ethnicity were the effect modifiers (moderators).

Results: Overall, individuals with higher educational attainment were more likely to smoke a hookah. Individuals who lived out of poverty, however, had lower odds of current hookah smoking. Race and ethnicity both showed statistical interactions with both socioeconomic indicators suggesting that Blacks and Hispanics with high educational attainment and those who live out of poverty have disproportionately high odds of hookah smoking, compared to non-Hispanic Whites with high socioeconomic status.

Conclusions: In the United States, middle-class racial and ethnic minority people remain at higher risk of smoking hookah. As a result, we should expect a high tobacco burden in middle-class Black and Hispanic adults. We suggest that policymakers should not take an over-simplistic way and reduce the problem of race/ethnic inequalities in tobacco use to gaps in socioeconomic status between groups. Marginalization-related diminished returns generate tobacco disparities in higher socioeconomic status levels. Middle-class racial and ethnic minority people need extra support to stay healthy.

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is a debilitating disorder that can develop following exposure to a traumatic event. Although the cause of PTSD is known, the brain mechanisms of its development remain unknown, especially why it arises in some people but not in others. Most of the research on PTSD has dealt with psychological and brain mechanisms underlying its symptomatology, including intrusive memories, fear and avoidance (see ref.1 for a broad coverage of PTSD research)¹. Here we focus, instead, on the origin of PTSD, namely on the neural mechanisms underlying its development. Specifically, we propose a two-hit model for PTSD development, with the following components. (a) The 1st hit is a neuroimmune challenge, as a preexisting condition, and the 2nd hit is intense glutamatergic neurotransmission, induced by the traumatic event; (b) the key molecule that mediates the effects of these two hits is intercellular adhesion molecule 5 (ICAM-5) which was found to be differentially expressed in PTSD². ICAM-5 is activated by neuroimmune challenge^3,4 and glutamatergic neurotransmission^5,6, it further enhances glutamatergic transmission⁶, and exerts a potent effect on synapse formation and neural plasticity, in addition to immunoregulatory functions^3,4,7; and (c) with respect to the neural network(s) involved, the brain areas most involved are medial temporal cortical areas, and interconnected cortical and subcortical areas^8-10. We hypothesize that the net result of intense glutamatergic transmission in those areas induced by a traumatic event in the presence of ongoing neuroimmune challenge leads to increased levels of ICAM-5 which further enhances glutamatergic transmission and thus leads to a state of a neural network with highly correlated neural interactions, as has been observed in functional neuroimaging studies^8-10. We assume that such a "locked-in" network underlies the intrusive re-experiencing in PTSD and maintains associated symptomatology, such as fear and avoidance.