scholarly journals Psychosocial Mechanisms Linking the Social Environment to Mental Health in African Americans

PLoS ONE ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. e0154035 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scherezade K. Mama ◽  
Yisheng Li ◽  
Karen Basen-Engquist ◽  
Rebecca E. Lee ◽  
Deborah Thompson ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals What does social support sound like? Challenges and opportunities for using passive episodic audio collection to assess the social environment

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Anubhuti Poudyal ◽  
Alastair van Heerden ◽  
Ashley Hagaman ◽  
Celia Islam ◽  
Ada Thapa ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Support ◽  
Data Collection ◽  
Social Interactions ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Mobile Phones ◽  
Adolescent Mothers ◽  
Qualitative Interviews ◽  
The Social ◽  
Audio Data

Abstract Background: The social environment, including social support, social burden, and quality of interactions, influences a range of health outcomes, including mental health. Passive audio data collection on mobile phones (e.g., episodic recording of the auditory environment without requiring any active input from the phone user) enables new opportunities to understand the social environment. We evaluated the use of passive audio collection on mobile phones as a window onto the relationship between the social environment within a study of mental health among adolescent mothers in Nepal.Methods: We enrolled 23 adolescent mothers who first participated in qualitative interviews to describe their social support and identify sounds potentially associated with that support. Then episodic recordings were collected for two weeks from the same women using an app to capture 30 seconds of audio every 15 minutes from 4am to 9pm. Audio data were processed and classified using a pretrained model. Each classification category was accompanied by a predicted accuracy score. Manual validation of the machine-predicted speech and non-speech categories (10%) was done for accuracy.Results: In qualitative interviews, mothers described a range of positive and negative social interactions and the sounds that accompanied these. Potential positive sounds included adult speech and laughter, baby babbling and laughter, and sounds from baby toys. Sounds characterizing negative stimuli included yelling, crying, screaming by adults and crying by babies. Sounds associated with social isolation included silence and TV or radio noises. Speech comprised of 43% of all passively recorded audio clips (n=7725). Manual validation showed a 23% false positive rate and 62% false-negative rate for speech, demonstrating potential underestimation of speech exposure. Other common sounds included music and vehicular noises.Conclusions: Passively capturing audio has the potential to improve understanding of the social environment. However, the limited accuracy of the pre-trained model used in this study did not adequately distinguish between positive and negative social interactions. To improve the contribution of passive audio collection to understanding the social environment, future work should improve the accuracy of audio categorization, code for constellations of sounds, and combine audio with other smartphone data collection such as location and activity.

The wider social system

2021 ◽  
pp. 238-281
Author(s):  
Robbie Duschinsky ◽  
Sarah Foster
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social System ◽  
Public Mental Health ◽  
Epistemic Trust ◽  
School Based ◽  
System P ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Individual

Critics have alleged that in attempting to adapt to the individual-centric environment of contemporary health provision, mentalization-based therapy itself has been complicit with the atomization of society. Conversations with his colleague Peter Fuggle and Dickon Bevington at the Anna Freud Centre have also had a profound role in highlighting to Fonagy the importance of the wider social system around the individual. Pursuing these questions, this chapter begins by examining the growing attention to the social environment shown by Fonagy and colleagues, and especially their exploration of the role of friends and friendships for mentalization and epistemic trust. It will then examine the reflections and research by Fonagy and collaborators on public mental health. The researchers’ hopes regarding school-based prevention will be given particular attention, and the chapter will also show how this work has shaped Fonagy’s efforts as a policy influencer. Finally, the chapter will appraise the considerations offered by Fonagy and colleagues of the role of culture, in particular the issue of whether attention to cultural processes should be regarded as mentalizing, non-mentalizing or as not mentalizing, and whether organizations and societies can themselves be said to institutionalize cultures of mentalizing or non-mentalizing.

scholarly journals THOSE LEFT BEHIND

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-33
Author(s):  
Alexis C. Dennis
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Psychological Distress ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Educational Attainment ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
Equation Modeling ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working Age ◽  
The Relationship

Abstract While the socioeconomic status (SES)–psychological distress gradient is well-documented in the social science literature, less attention has been devoted to how this relationship varies within sociodemographic subgroups. I contribute to this small but growing literature by first examining the relationship between multiple dimensions of SES and two measures of psychological distress (depression and anxiety) among working-age African Americans. I then test whether three social mediators explain the SES–psychological distress relationship, and whether gender modifies these associations and/or the social mediators that shape them. To address these aims, I analyze two waves of population-representative data from the Detroit Neighborhood Health Study (N=685). Data were collected between 2008 and 2010 in the wake of the Great Recession. I utilize structural equation modeling with latent variables to assess these relationships, and test indirect and conditional effects to detect the presence of mediation and/or moderation, respectively. Findings revealed associations between higher total household income and lower levels of depression/anxiety, as well as unemployment and increased depression/anxiety among working-age African Americans. Furthermore, higher educational attainment was associated with reduced anxiety, but not depression, in this population. Gender moderated these findings such that unemployment was associated with higher levels of depression/anxiety among women but not men. I also found that trauma mediated the relationship between unemployment and depression/anxiety as well as educational attainment and anxiety. Gender, however, moderated the association between unemployment and depression/anxiety via traumatic events such that the relationship was stronger among women than men. Collectively, these findings contribute to our limited understanding of African Americans’ mental health and underscore the importance of how both socioeconomic forces and life course experiences with traumatic events contribute to poor mental health among this population.

scholarly journals The Impact of Shared Versus Individual Office Space on Therapist Appraisal of Their Work Environment

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. i26
Author(s):  
Shane L Rogers ◽  
Stephen J Edwards ◽  
Rebecca Perera
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Work Environment ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
Physical Environment ◽  
Primary Objective ◽  
Physical Work ◽  
Office Space ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Impact

Objective:  The primary objective was to investigate the impact of shared versus individual office space on therapist appraisal of the work physical and social environment, and overall appraisal of working conditions. Method:  Therapists (n = 59) from Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services in Western Australia were surveyed about their appraisal of the social and physical work environment, in addition to their overall appraisal of working conditions. Results:  Compared to therapists with individual offices, therapists occupying shared office space reported lower appraisal of the work physical environment and lower overall appraisal of working conditions. No difference was found between groups for appraisal of the work social environment. Additionally, when statistically controlling for office space, both the appraisal of the social and physical environment made an independent contribution to the prediction of overall work satisfaction. Conclusion:  This research reveals that shared office space can negatively impact therapist appraisal of their work environment and reduce overall appraisal of working conditions. Additionally, results reveal the high importance of the physical environment for staff satisfaction in a mental health service.

scholarly journals Financial strain and stressful social environment drive depressive symptoms, while FKBP5 variant intensifies the effect, in African Americans living in Tallahassee

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kia Fuller ◽  
Clarence C. Gravlee ◽  
Chris McCarty ◽  
Miaisha M. Mitchell ◽  
Connie J. Mulligan
Keyword(s):  
Risk Factors ◽  
African Americans ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Genetic Variants ◽  
Age Of Onset ◽  
The United States ◽  
Financial Strain ◽  
World Health ◽  
Social Stressors ◽  
The Social

AbstractThe World Health Organization estimates that almost 300 million people suffer from depression worldwide. Depression is the most common mental health disorder and shows racial disparities in disease prevalence, age of onset, severity of symptoms, frequency of diagnosis, and treatment utilization across the United States. Since depression has both social and genetic risk factors, we propose a conceptual model wherein social stressors are primary risk factors for depression, but genetic variants increase or decrease individual susceptibility to the effects of the social stressors. Our research strategy incorporates both social and genetic data to investigate variation in symptoms of depression (CES-D scores). We collected data on financial strain (difficulty paying bills) and personal social networks (a model of an individual’s social environment), and we genotyped genetic variants in five genes involved in stress reactivity (HTR1a, BDNF, GNB3, SLC6A4, and FKBP5) in 135 African Americans residing in Tallahassee, Florida. We found that high financial strain and a high percentage of people in one’s social network who are a source of stress or worry were significantly associated with higher CES-D scores and explained more variation in CES-D scores than did genetic factors. Only one genetic variant (rs1360780 in FKBP5) was significantly associated with CES-D scores and only when the social stressors were included in the model. Interestingly, the effect of FKPB5 appeared to be strongest in individuals with high financial strain such that participants with a T allele at rs1360780 in FKBP5 and high financial strain had the highest mean CES-D scores in our study population. These results suggest that material disadvantage and a stressful social environment increases the risk of depression, but that individual-level genetic variation may increase susceptibility to the adverse health consequences of social stressors.

The Role of the Social Environment on Physical and Mental Health of Older Adults

2012 ◽  
Vol 26 (1-3) ◽  
pp. 290-307 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie A. Norstrand ◽  
Allen Glicksman ◽  
James Lubben ◽  
Morton Kleban
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Physical And Mental Health ◽  
The Social

scholarly journals Inpatient Institutional Care: The Forced Social Environment

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma C. Joyes ◽  
Melanie Jordan ◽  
Gary Winship ◽  
Paul Crawford
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
Social Environment ◽  
Social Connectedness ◽  
Physical Violence ◽  
Institutional Care ◽  
Mental Healthcare ◽  
Social Contact ◽  
Clinical Expertise ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Uk

The landscape of mental health recovery is changing; there have been calls for a shift from the clinical expertise being the dominant voice within mental healthcare towards a more personalised and collaborative service that supports those in need of mental healthcare to define what recovery is for the individual. Within this new recovery movement, there has been a recognition of the importance of the social environment in which individuals are situated and the relationship of this to mental health and wellbeing. Included in this is the importance of an individual’s role within society and the ways in which knowledge, such as experts by experience, can hold an important value. The argument then, is that social connectedness forms part of the recovery journey and that relationships can help us develop or re-connect with who we are in powerful ways. Such a view has only been strengthened by the recent and ongoing global COVID-19 pandemic. Within the UK, discussions of the importance of our wellbeing have become commonplace within the context of restricted social contact. With this heightened awareness of how the social contributes to wellbeing, it is important to consider the environments in which those in receipt of mental healthcare are situated. One of which is institutionalised care, where it is commonplace to restrict social contact. For example, by virtue of being within a locked environment, individuals’ freedom of movement is often non-existent and thus contacts with those not residing or working within the institution is restricted. While such restrictions may be deemed necessary to protect the individual’s mental health, such environments can be unintentionally toxic. Data are presented from an ethnography that was conducted within an inpatient forensic mental health hospital in the UK to highlight the problematic social environment which some individuals experience. Key interpersonal issues are presented, such as, trust, racism, the threat of physical violence and bullying that was experienced by staff and residents at the hospital. Consideration is given to the coping strategies enacted by residents and the pathologising of such behaviour. The consequences on interpersonal wellbeing are explored.

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