Shanyang Zhao

Prevalence, correlates, and course of minor depression and major depression in the national comorbidity survey

Data from the National Comorbidity Survey are used to study the lifetime prevalences, correlates, course and impairments associated with minor depression (mD), major depression 5-6 symptoms (MD 5-6), and major depression with seven or more symptoms (MD 7-9) in an effort to determine whether mD is on a continuum with MD. There is a monotonic increase in average number of episodes, average length of longest episode, impairment, comorbidity, and parental history of psychiatric disorders as we go from mD to Md 5-6 to MD 7-9. In most of these cases, though, the differences between mD and MD 5-6 are no longer than the differences between MD 5-6 and MD 7-9, arguing for continuity between mD and MD. Coupled with the finding from earlier studies that subclinical depression is a significant risk factor for major depression, these results argue that minor depression is a variant of depressive disorder that should be considered seriously both as a target for preventive intervention and for treatment. The paper closes with suggestions regarding the analysis of mD subtypes in future longitudinal studies.

The epidemiology of DSM-III-R bipolar I disorder in a general population survey

BACKGROUND Data are presented on the general population epidemiology of DSM-III-R bipolar I disorder in the United States. METHODS Data come from the US National Comorbidity Survey (NCS), a general population survey of DSM-III-R disorders. A modified version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview was used to make diagnoses. RESULTS A small (N = 59) clinical reappraisal study showed that the only manic symptom profile that could validly be assessed with the CIDI is characterized by euphoria, grandiosity and the ability to maintain energy without sleep, which described approximately half of all clinically validated bipolar I cases in the NCS. Further analysis focused on this symptom profile, which involved N = 29 cases in the total sample. Lifetime prevalence was estimated to be 0.4% and 12-month prevalence only slightly lower. Caseness was negatively related to income, education and age, positively related to urbanicity, and elevated among the previously married, never married and non-whites. All cases reported at least one other NCS/DSM-III-R disorder and 59.3% reported that their episode of bipolar disorder (either mania or depression) occurred at a later age than at least one other NCS/DSM-III-R disorder. Although 93.2% of lifetime cases reported some lifetime treatment, only 44.7% of recent cases were in treatment. CONCLUSIONS The type of bipolar disorder examined here is highly chronic, co-morbid and impairing. Increased efforts are required to attract current cases into appropriate treatment. Methodological research is needed to develop more accurate measures of other bipolar symptom profiles for use in general population epidemiological studies.

Toward a taxonomy of copresence

This paper contributes to the presence literature by explicating the meanings and subtypes of copresence.Copresence is defined here as consisting of two dimensions: copresence as mode of being with others, and copresence as sense of being with others. Mode of copresence refers to the physical conditions that structure human interaction. Six such conditions are delineated. Sense of copresence, on the other hand, refers to the subjective experience of being with others that an individual acquires in interaction. The main argument of this paper is that mode of copresence affects sense of copresence, and knowledge of how the former affects the latter will benefit copresence design.

Do Internet Users Have More Social Ties? A Call for Differentiated Analyses of Internet Use

Research on the impact of Internet use on social ties has generated conflicting results. Based on data from the 2000 General Social Survey, this study finds that different types of Internet usage are differentially related to social connectivity. While nonsocial users of the Internet do not differ significantly from nonusers in network size, social users of the Internet have more social ties than nonusers do. Among social users, heavy email users have more social ties than do light email users. There is indication that, while email users communicate online with people whom they also contact offline, chat users maintain some of their social ties exclusively online. These findings call for differentiated analyses of Internet uses and their effects on interpersonal connectivity.

Reliability and procedural validity of UM-CIDI DSM-III-R phobic disorders

We evaluate the long-term test-retest reliability and procedural validity of phobia diagnoses in the UM-CIDI, the version of the Composite International Diagnostic Interview, used in the US National Co-morbidity Survey (NCS) and a number of other ongoing large-scale epidemiological surveys. Test-retest reliabilities of lifetime diagnoses of simple phobia, social phobia, and agoraphobia over a period between 16 and 34 months were K = 0.46, 0.47, and 0.63, respectively. Concordances with the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-III-R (SCID) were K = 0.45, 0.62, and 0.63, respectively. Diagnostic discrepancies with the SCID were due to the UM-CIDI under-diagnosing. Post hoc analysis demonstrated that modification of UM-CIDI coding rules could dramatically improve cross-sectional procedural validity for both simple phobia (K = 0.57) and social phobia (K = 0.95). Based on these results, it seems likely that future modification of CIDI questions and coding rules could lead to substantial improvements in diagnostic validity.

Ethno-Racial Identity Displays on Facebook

The present study investigates self-presentation in a nonymous setting and explores differences in self-presentation by distinct ethno-racial groups. Based on content analysis of 83 Facebook profiles of African Americans, Latino, Indian and Vietnamese ancestry students, supplemented by 63 in-person interviews, we found that ethno-racial identities are salient and highly elaborated. The intensive investments of minorities in presenting highly social, culturally explicit and elaborated narratives of self reflect a certain resistance to the racial silencing of minorities by dominant color-blind ideologies of broader society. In the nonymous environment of Facebook, various dimensions of identity claimsappear to be grounded in offline realities as revealed in interviews and observations of campus social dynamics.

Metatheory, Metamethod, Meta-Data-Analysis: What, Why, and How?

This paper examines recent developments in meta-study in sociology which involves metatheory, metamethod, and meta-data-analysis. It argues that the three branches of meta-study, though previously unrelated, are now rapidly converging, signaling, among other things, the existence of a sustained crisis in the discipline. It concludes that meta-study will continue to grow in sociology for some time to come.

Parental education and children's online health information seeking: beyond the digital divide debate.

Research has shown that increasing numbers of teenagers are going online to find health information, but it is unclear whether there are disparities in the prevalence of online health seeking among young Internet users associated with social and economic conditions. Existing literature on Internet uses by adults indicates that low income, less educated, and minority individuals are less likely to be online health seekers. Based on the analysis of data from the Pew Internet and American Life Project for the US, this study finds that teens of low education parents are either as likely as or even more likely than teens of high education parents to seek online health information. Multiple regression analysis shows that the higher engagement in health seeking by teens of low education parents is related to a lower prevalence of parental Internet use, suggesting that some of these teens may be seeking online health information on behalf of their low education parents. Implications of these findings are discussed in relation to the issues of the digital divide and digital empowerment.

The US National Comorbidity Survey: Overview and future directions

This report presents an overview of the results of the US National Comorbidity Survey (NCS) (Kessler et al., 1994) and future directions based on these results. The NCS is a survey that was mandated by the US Congress to study the comorbidity of substance use disorders and nonsubstance psychiatric disorders in the general population of the US. It is the first survey to administer a structured psychiatric interview for DSM-IH-R disorders to a representative national sample in the US. The need for such a survey was noted nearly two decades ago in the report of the Presidents Commission on Mental Health and Illness (1978). It was impossible to undertake such a survey at that time, though, due to the absence of a structured research diagnostic interview capa-) ble of generating reliable psychiatric diagnoses in general population samples. Recognizing this need, the National Institute of Mental Health funded the development of the Diagnostic Interview Schedule (DIS) (Robins et al., 1981), a research diagnostic interview that can be administered by trained interviewers who are not clinicians. The DIS was first used in the Epidemiologic Catchment Area (ECA) Study, a landmark study that interviewed over 20,000 respondents in a series of five community epidemiologic surveys of the US. The ECA has been the main sour-

COPRESENCE AS ‘BEING WITH’

This article examines the issue of ‘ubiquitous connectivity’ on the Internet. The Internet, combined with the wireless technologies, is said to have made it possible for ‘anyone to contact anyone else anywhere at anytime’, but such ubiquity of connectivity has failed to materialize in actual human contact. Drawing on Goffman and Giddenss theories of human interaction, the authors make a distinction between co-location, which is a spatial relationship among individuals, and copresence, a social relationship. While co-location puts people within range of each other, copresence renders people mutually accessible for contact. However, the establishment of copresence is normatively regulated in society, which demarcates different regions of space for different types of activity. Social contact takes place in a domain where copresence is affected not only by the regionality of contact but also by the power relations that underlie personal affinity and social engagement. It is concluded that so long as there are social barriers that separate people into different groups of interests and different positions in the hierarchy of fame and power, there will be fragmentations in the online world that make the ubiquity of social connectivity impossible.