Jane D. McLeod

Poverty, Parenting, and Children's Mental Health.

Poor children experience greater psychological distress than do nonpoor children. However, evidence for the relationship between poverty and childrens distress is limited by the use of measures of poverty at a single point in time, by a failure to examine race or ethnic differences, and by a lack of concern with explanations for povertys effects. Using data from the 1986 Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data set, we explored the relationships among current poverty, length of time spent in poverty, maternal parenting behaviors, and childrens mental health. Persistent poverty significantly predicts childrens internalizing symptoms above and beyond the effect of current poverty, whereas only current poverty predicts externalizing symptoms. Mothers weak emotional responsiveness and frequent use of physical punishment explain the effect of current poverty on mental health, but not the effect of persistent poverty. The relationships among poverty, parenting behaviors, and childrens mental health do not vary by race/ethnicity. These findings support theoretical developments calling for greater emphasis on family processes in studies of childrens poverty. They also argue for greater attention to trajectories of socioeconomic status in analyses of the effects of status on mental health.

Socioeconomic status differences in vulnerability to undesirable life events.

Previous research has documented consistently that persons holding low-socioeconomic status (SES) positions are more strongly affected emotionally by undesirable life events than are their higher-status counterparts. Two types of resources have been implicated in this differential vulnerability: financial resources and a broader class of coping resources, including social support and resilient personality characteristics. We present an analysis that disaggregates measure of life events and of SES to identify which events and which components of SES are most important for understanding differential vulnerability. We document that the lower-SES vulnerability persists across all types of personal events. In addition, we find that differential vulnerability is not confined to income but extends to education and occupational status as well. On the basis of these patterns, we conclude that differential vulnerability reflects more than a simple economic reality. Previous research offers speculative evidence that status differences in past and current social environments may explain differential vulnerability, especially through their effects on the socialization of resilient personality characteristics. We propose future research that could help to evaluate the validity of these speculations.

Childhood Emotional and Behavioral Problems and Educational Attainment

Do childhood emotional and behavioral problems diminish the probability of graduating from high school and attending college? If so, are their effects primarily attributable to the persistence of those problems over time, to continuities in social environments, or to the cumulative effects of early academic failures? We provide answers to these questions using data from the Children of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth data set (1986-2000). Internalizing and externalizing problems at ages 6-8 significantly and strongly diminish the probability of receiving a high school degree. Among youth who receive a high school degree, externalizing problems also diminish the probability of subsequent college enrollment. In the case of high school degree receipt, the educational disadvantages associated with child emotional and behavioral problems result from the association of those problems with academic failures in middle and high school. In contrast, the association of childhood behavior problems with college enrollment appears to reflect the persisting effects of early behavioral and academic predispositions. Our results add to a growing body of research that demonstrates that social selection processes contribute to socioeconomic disparities. They also suggest new directions for research concerned with socially-structured, transactional, person-environment interactions.

The Construction of Fear: Americans' Preferences for Social Distance from Children and Adolescents with Mental Health Problems.

Debates about childrens mental health problems have raised questions about the reliability and validity of diagnosis and treatment. However, little research has focused on social reactions to children with mental health problems. This gap in research raises questions about competing theories of stigma, as well as specific factors shaping prejudice and discrimination toward those children. Here, we organize a general model of stigma that synthesizes previous research. We apply a reduced version of this model to data from a nationally representative sample responding to vignettes depicting several stigmatizing scenarios, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, asthma, or “normal troubles.” Results from the National Stigma Study—Children suggest a gradient of rejection from highest to lowest, as follows: ADHD, depression, “normal troubles,” and physical illness. Stigmatizing reactions are highest toward adolescents. Importantly, respondents who label the vignette childs situation as a mental illness compared to those who label the problem as a physical illness or a “normal” situation report greater preferences for social distance, a pattern that appears to result from perceptions that the child is dangerous.

Childhood parental loss and adult depression.

Previous research demonstrates convincingly that childhood parental deaths and parental divorces have implications for adult well-being as defined by levels of depression, educational attainment, early age at marriage, and risk of divorce. What this research has failed to examine are the interconnections among these outcomes. Specifically, are the socioeconomic and marital outcomes of parental loss implicated in the observed higher levels of depression? This analysis takes a first step in answering this question. Using data from a sample of 1,755 married men and women, I estimated regression models which examine the extent to which adult socioeconomic status and current marital quality mediate and/or modify the loss-depression relationship. Parental divorce was strongly related to socioeconomic and marital outcomes. Furthermore, current marital quality contributed importantly to understanding the higher levels of depressed mood observed among persons from divorced homes. Parental death was much more weakly related to socioeconomic and marital outcomes, and these outcomes played little role in explaining its relationship to depression. Finally, all of these relationships were stronger among women than men. These findings support the utility of life-course approaches to understanding adult mental health.

Poverty and child emotional and behavioral problems: Racial/ethnic differences in processes and effects:

Using a sample of four to nine year-old children from the 1992 wave of the Children of the National Longitudinal Surveys of Youth data set, we evaluated racial and ethnic differences in the effects of current poverty and the persistence of poverty on child emotional and behavioral problems, and in the variables responsible for those effects. We considered three sets of variables in the latter analysis-mothers early characteristics and behaviors; correlated sociodemographic characteristics; and mediators (neighborhood problems, mothers psychological resources, and characteristics of the home environment) -and evaluated their relevance across three racial/ethnic subgroups (blacks, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic whites). Consistent with our expectations, we observed a significantly stronger effect of the persistence of poverty on child problems for whites than for blacks, an effect that is attributable to the relatively strong association between poverty and mothers prior history of delinquency and current marital status among whites. The effect of poverty on child problems was substantially explainedfor blacks by mother s early self-esteem, whereas mediating processes took on greater relevance for Hispanics and non-Hispanic whites. Our results support the conclusion that there are racial/ethnic differences in the selection processes and proximal conditions that are responsible for the diminished psychological well-being ofpoor children.

Social Stratification and Inequality

Systems of stratification produce mental health disparities. This chapter examines the evidence for two general processes that produce those disparities: the distribution of life conditions and social evaluations. Proximate life conditions depend on four generic resources: economic resources, social capital, power and authority, and civil rights. Evidence regarding the contributions of these resources to mental health disparities is mixed. Although the positions people occupy in stratification hierarchies are strongly associated with resources, not all resources are equally relevant to all dimensions of stratification or to mental health. Social evaluation processes involve comparisons of one’s accomplishments or experiences to those of others. Research on social comparisons, relative deprivation, subjective status, and justice and equity demonstrates that people who occupy lower status positions perceive themselves as disadvantaged relative to others, but those perceptions depend on several contingencies. Challenges for developing a conceptual model that takes these complex findings into account are discussed.

Adolescent Mental Health, Behavior Problems, and Academic Achievement

Prior research on the association of mental health and behavior problems with academic achievement is limited because it does not consider multiple problems simultaneously, take co-occurring problems into account, and control for academic aptitude. We addressed these limitations using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (N = 6,315). We estimated the associations of depression, attention problems, delinquency, and substance use with two indicators of academic achievement (high school GPA and highest degree received) with controls for academic aptitude. Attention problems, delinquency, and substance use were significantly associated with diminished achievement, but depression was not. Combinations of problems involving substance use were especially consequential. Our results demonstrate that the social consequences of mental health problems are not the inevitable result of diminished functional ability but, rather, reflect negative social responses. These results also encourage a broader perspective on mental health by demonstrating that behavior problems heighten the negative consequences of more traditional forms of distress.

Mental Health, Social Mirror

Part I. Reflections Through The Sociological Looking Glass.- Through the Looking Glass: The Fortunes of the Sociology of Mental Health.- Sociology, Psychiatry, and the Production of Knowledge about Mental Health and Its Treatment.- The Changing Role(s) of Sociology (and Psychology) in the National Institute of Mental Health Intramural Research Program.- Part II. Sociological Theory and Mental Health.- Classical Sociological Theory, Evolutionary Psychology, and Mental Health.- Contemporary Social Theory and the Sociological Study of Mental Health.- Part III. The Social Origins of Mental Health and Mental Illness.- Class Relations, Economic Inequality and Mental Health: Why Social Class Matters to the Sociology of Mental Health.- Work and the Political Economy of Stress: Recontextualizing the Study of Mental Health/Illness in Sociology.- Race and Mental Health: Past Debates, New Opportunities.- Karen D. Lincoln.- Life Course Perspectives on Social Factors and Mental Illness.- Transition to Adulthood, Mental Health, and Inequality.- Contributions of the Sociology of Mental Health for Understanding the Social Antecedents, Social Regulation, and Social Distribution of Emotion.- Social Psychology and Stress Research.- Part IV. Social Responses to Mental Illness.- Stigma and the Sociological Enterprise.- Social Integration: A Conceptual Overview and Two Case Studies.- Sociological Traditions in the Study of Mental Health Services Utilization.- An Organizational Analysis of Mental Health Care.- Recognizing a Role for Structure and Agency: Integrating Sociological Perspectives into the Study of Recovery from Severe Mental Illness.- Part V. Mental Health, Social Mirror: Looking Forward, Reflecting Back.- Mainstream Sociology and Sociological Specialties: Toward Understanding the Gap and Its Consequences

Connections between Childhood and Adulthood

The study of the relationship between childhood and adulthood is an inherently interdisciplinary project. Psychologists, psychiatrists, sociologists, and epidemiologists have all made central contributions to our understanding of the processes through which early material, experiential, and psychological endowments shape subsequent development. In areas as diverse as the childhood predictors of adult health, the long-term sequelae of childhood adversity, and life course continuities in antisocial behavior researchers have presented compelling evidence for childhood-adulthood links and have begun to eludicate the mechanisms responsible for them. These investigations draw on life course concepts such as transitions and trajectories and affirm their utility for understanding the long-term implications of early life experiences.