A giant study of Finns confirms that a good socioeconomic status protects against mental health disorders. The more you earn, the lower the risk of getting sick with them.
The study followed all Finns born between 1966 and 1986. There are almost 1.3 million of them.
A Finnish study was published Journal of Epidemiology & Community Health – science journal.
Purpose was to find out how one’s employment situation, income and education at the age of thirty predict a diagnosis at a later age.
In total, during the follow-up, one in four had received a mental health diagnosis.
Mood disorders such as depression, anxiety disorders, psychotic illnesses and substance abuse disorders were included in the review.
“Mental health disorders are really common, which doesn’t always come out in public discussion,” says a researcher at the University of Helsinki Christian Hakulinenone of the authors of the study.
In the accompanying graphs, cumulative incidence means the accumulation of diseases over time.
Although one in four had received a diagnosis of some mental health disorder, in reality there are disorders in a much larger group.
In the study, the youngest age groups could only be followed for such a short time that they did not have time to accumulate diagnoses.
The longest follow-up period – 22 years – was for those born in 1966, for whom information was available until the age of 52. The youngest age group could only be followed for one year.
So the supporters prepared a statistical model from their data. It estimates the risk of developing mental health disorders if everyone had been followed for the same amount of time, up to the age of 52.
Model revealed that a surprising number of people will receive a mental health diagnosis during their lifetime. The socio-economic differences in getting sick are also large.
The analysis showed, for example, that in their thirties, those with only primary schooling have a 58 percent risk of developing a mental health disorder later on. For highly educated people, the risk is again 36 percent.
In their thirties, the risk is as much as 63 percent for those in the lowest income fifth, while it is 25 percent for the highest income fifth.
Risk of disease changes evenly according to income or education.
“The more you earn, the lower your risk of getting sick later. Or the higher your education, the lower the risk,” says Hakulinen
According to him, the power of socio-economic factors is quite large.
“In a way, every hundred euros is more for your own well-being or, in this case, for avoiding problems,” says Hakulinen.
“The central idea behind this study is that people with a low social status have more stressors and fewer resources to respond to these stressors.”
The reason and the consequence relationship also works the other way around. Mental health problems are more likely to lead to a worse socioeconomic status.
In a previous study, Hakulinen and his colleagues found that mental health disorders under the age of 25 are strongly linked to a worse position on the labor market later on.
“But it’s not believable that it’s only about this in later life, but the other side of the coin comes along,” says Hakulinen.
“The risk of getting sick with mental health disorders increases during the life cycle for those people who are in a weaker position, receive less education and earn less.”
Researchers also conducted a sibling analysis to determine how much family background would explain the effect of socioeconomic status on mental health problems. It explained it a little, but not significantly.
What then make it so that the problems pile up on low-income and low-educated people?
According to Hakulinen, if this is to be tackled, socio-economic differences should be narrowed or special support should be targeted at people of low social status.
Research based on this, it was not possible to conclude how large a proportion of Finns will receive a mental health diagnosis during their lifetime. Very large numbers have been obtained around the world.
“For example, Denmark has a similar population to ours in Finland, and there every third is a visit that required special hospital treatment for mental health reasons,” says Hakulinen.
In New Zealand, one was followed again in the study the same people from childhood to adulthood. It turned out that even more than 80 percent of them met the diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder at some point in their lives.
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