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Psychiatry can be a wealthy profession, and they are being paid by somebody.

It has been a chicken-and-egg question for decades: Does the misery of poverty breed mental illness, or does the burden of mental illness cast people down into poverty? The two clearly tend to go together, but which causes which?

An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October indicates that poverty causes mental illness and behavioral problems in children with removal from poverty improving their mental health.

People with low incomes and no insurance are nearly twice as likely as the general population to have psychiatric disorders, according to a study presented in the 2001 Journal of Family Practice.

For decades, researchers have known that poverty and mental illness are correlated; the lower a person's socioeconomic status, the greater his or her chances are of having some sort of mental disorder. Yet determining if one comes first - if being poor renders a person more susceptible to mental illness, or if mental illness pulls a person into poverty - is decidedly difficult and the relationship between poverty and mental health has long been assumed to be interactive.

Superman wrote:

General Brock wrote:You are concerned with breeding poor blood?.

I give up...

How about just shutting up until you have something to say? Native people and indians... Do you always have this much difficulty with staying on track?

General Brock wrote:As a matter of fact I do have trouble staying on a narrow-minded track.

Have you got anything useful to say other than hostile venting about trailer trash and how they shouldn't be allowed to breed and pop celebrities not even checked into your rehab facility?

Superman wrote:For people who have taken even psych 101, the correlation of poverty and mental illness is 1 + 1. This correlation is so strongly established that the debate now is which came first, the poverty or the mental illness? Again, if you don't know what you're talking about, shut the fuck up.

Psychiatry can be a wealthy profession, and they are being paid by somebody.

Clarify?

secondary

It has been a chicken-and-egg question for decades: Does the misery of poverty breed mental illness, or does the burden of mental illness cast people down into poverty? The two clearly tend to go together, but which causes which?

And this

An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October indicates that poverty causes mental illness and behavioral problems in children with removal from poverty improving their mental health.

Here too

People with low incomes and no insurance are nearly twice as likely as the general population to have psychiatric disorders, according to a study presented in the 2001 Journal of Family Practice.

How many more do you want? This one is too easy. There's an abundance of primary and secondary sources.

Superman wrote:

General Brock wrote:As a matter of fact I do have trouble staying on a narrow-minded track.

If that is a genuine problem for you, then I will say sorry for being pushy about it. It's probably not your fault.

Have you got anything useful to say other than hostile venting about trailer trash and how they shouldn't be allowed to breed and pop celebrities not even checked into your rehab facility?

You can lump that pop celebrity into the 'trailer trash' category you speak of. I never said that they absolutely should not be allowed to breed.

Ah yes... We can't judge! Everyone is an individual and people are not predictable at all... How dare I? The fact that people who come in to treatment most all have chaotic and unstable families of origin... well that's a coincidence. It means nothing.

Look, when it comes to psychopathology (mental illness), it's really a matter of heredity and environment working together. A screwed up family system really allows the genetic predisposition a person may have to achieve its full potential. In mental illness, it's a particularly rough situation because people not only raise kids without proper nurturing instincts, but those kids grow up and continue the cycle.

And before you put words in my mouth, er letters on my screen, again... I never said any of these represent absolutes. There are always exceptions. It's a matter of the VAST majority.

The real tragedy of the whole ridiculous situation is the fact that this white trash bitch has already had a couple of kids. I guess they're having custody battles for them now, right?

No matter which of those two idiots raises these kids, they're going to be screwed. So what should we do in a case like this?

I propose the following; we give these two kids to a motherless chimpanzee at the San Diego zoo. No matter how you look at it, they will be much better off than with either of the two retards who are trying to get them now. The chimpanzee mom will raise them as her own. They will never go hungry either, as zoo staff will always make sure they have food, and patrons will provide them with extra peanuts.

It's a win win situation.

Any other ideas?

Darth Wong wrote:Brock, you asked for sources, they have been provided. Now it's your turn to either explain what those sources did wrong or admit you're full of shit. No third option of mumbling vaguely about uncertainty and bias.

Mental illness and poverty: Does one cause the other?

By Carey Goldberg, Globe Staff | March 8, 2005

It has been a chicken-and-egg question for decades: Does the misery of poverty breed mental illness, or does the burden of mental illness cast people down into poverty? The two clearly tend to go together, but which causes which?

This week, a Massachusetts researcher published possibly the broadest study yet on the question, examining tens of thousands of hospital records statewide to see whether patients who were hospitalized for mental illness then ''drifted down" to less affluent ZIP codes.

The study, which followed patients from 1994 through 2000, turned up surprisingly little such downward drift, said the researcher, Christopher G. Hudson, a professor at Salem State College and expert in mental health policy.

So, he said, ''the news here is that there is now increasingly strong evidence that socioeconomic status is indeed a very important dimension of mental illness, though obviously not the only dimension."

The study also highlighted the striking contrast between the state's richer and poorer communities when it comes to the rate of mental illness. It documented a rate of about 4 percent of the population with mental illness serious enough to lead to repeat hospitalizations in the richest communities, compared to about 12 percent or 13 percent in the poorest -- and those are very conservative figures, Hudson said.

Hudson acknowledged that the study, which focused on 34,000 patients who had been hospitalized at least twice, had some methodological issues. In particular, ZIP code is far from a foolproof way to determine a person's economic level. And he did not conduct diagnostic interviews with any patients.

David Duncan, a mental-health epidemiologist based in Kentucky, noted another possible flaw: When downward economic drift occurs among the mentally ill, it is believed to happen mainly before they are ever hospitalized. So, a study following them only after a first hospitalization might come too late to catch their drift, he said.

The study used powerful statistical tools to test five hypotheses about the link between mental illness and poverty, including the ''downward drift" idea. The theory that stressful economic conditions bring on mental illness was the only one that really fit the data, Hudson writes in the current issue of The American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, published by the American Psychological Association.

That comes as no surprise to Deborah Belle, a psychology professor at Boston University who studies poverty-related stress.

''There are so many plausible causal links between poverty and mental illness, particularly depression, which I know best," she said.

Among them: Poor people are likelier to face threatening, humiliating and entrapping life events, she said. Poverty can undermine their self-image and social connections, and leave them feeling deprived of control over the most basic aspects of their lives.

Hudson said that his findings jibed with his own experience as a community organizer and social worker among the demoralized poor in Chicago and on two Indian reservations. Their circumstances, he said, were like ''straightjackets, especially suited to induce mental breakdown."

Ever since a seminal study was conducted in 1930s Chicago, researchers have documented the tendency for poverty and mental illness to go hand in hand.

But they continue to dispute which causes which, and the answer may vary depending on the mental illness. Schizophrenia, which is often highly debilitating, may be more likely than other diseases to cause downward drift, for example. Depression and anxiety disorders may be likelier than other diseases to be exacerbated by poverty.

Hudson's study found that, for all types of mental illness, the data best fit the model of poverty as a cause rather than a result, but he did see some downward drift for schizophrenics, he said.

Asked whether his study translated into policy advice, he said that it showed how important it was for states to allocate mental health funding to towns based not simply on population -- as happens in many places -- but on the level of illness. It also suggests the need for more mental-health outreach in poor communities, and for programs linking mental health services with help obtaining jobs, housing and education, he said.

Hudson does not deny that biology and heredity play a role in mental illness; even the richest towns have a baseline level of mental illness that likely reflects that biological factor, he said. Other environmental factors like troubled families and life trauma are also linked to mental illness.

''We know that economic circumstances, the lack of supports, and the stresses that people are subject to sometimes overtax their cognitive and emotional and mental abilities."

And broadly speaking, he said, his study suggests that ''poverty is at least as important as innate or biological factors."

Carey Goldberg can be reached at [email protected].
© Copyright 2006 Globe Newspaper Company.

Poverty Causes Mental Illness and Behavioral Problems, North Carolina Study Shows

(November 27, 2003) An article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) in October indicates that poverty causes mental illness and behavioral problems in children with removal from poverty improving their mental health.

Since 1993, Jane Costello of the Duke University Medical School and her co-workers studied the mental health of 1400 children in rural North Carolina. Halfway through the project, a gambling casino opened on the reservation where some of the children lived, and the casino began distributing its profits to members of the tribe. Before the casino payments began, children in poor families had many more behavioral problems than children in families that were out of poverty, including delinquency, violence, disobedience and truancy. The payments—approximately $6,000 per family—were enough to move some families out of poverty, and in those families children’s mental health problems declined to levels of never-poor families. A similar improvement was noted in non-Indian children whose families moved out of poverty during the period.

This study is evidence that poverty causes mental illness and behavioral problems. An alternative theory is that mental illness causes poverty. This latter, while true for some, can be used as a justification for inaction to reduce poverty. "Nothing we can do will help--they're crazy."

E. Jane Costello, Scott N. Compton, Gordon Keeler, and Adrian Angold. “Relationships Between Poverty and Psychopathology: A Natural Experiment.” JAMA. 2003; 290:2003-2029. Abstract

Poverty Increases Risk for Mental Illness
From Cathleen Henning Fenton,

Risk doubled for low-income, uninsured populations
People with low incomes and no insurance are nearly twice as likely as the general population to have psychiatric disorders, according to a study presented in the 2001 Journal of Family Practice. Researchers in Colorado found that the quality of life could be improved if mental health care were provided in primary care settings.

The researchers conducted the study at the Marillac Clinic in Grand Junction, CO. The clinic serves people with no health insurance and with incomes less than 150% of the federal poverty level only. During April and May 1999, 500 patients participated in the study which consisted of completing questionnaires. These questionnaires were then compared with similar questionnaires from a sample of 3000 patients from general primary care settings.

The results of the study showed significantly higher rates of psychiatric disorders for the participants at the Marillac Clinic (51% vs 28%).
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Additionally, these patients showed lower functional status, increased disability days and increased physician visits. The rates of psychiatric disorders were divided into the following categories:

Mood Disorders
Low-Income, Uninsured Population: 33% | General Population 16%

Anxiety Disorders
Low-Income, Uninsured Population: 36% | General Population 11%

Alcohol Abuse
Low-Income, Uninsured Population: 17% | General Population 7%

Eating Disorders
Low-Income, Uninsured Population: 10% | General Population 7%

As significant as these findings are, the researchers feel that they are, in fact, conservative numbers. The researchers did not test for all psychiatric disorders, including dysthymia, non-alcohol substance abuse, bipolar disorder, etc.

As part of the study, the researchers also asked participants how they would like to be treated for psychiatric disorders. Almost all of the participants (90%) wanted medical providers and mental health providers to work together regarding the patients' health care.

As a result of the study, the researchers have been given 4-year grants to change the way psychiatric disorders are treated at the Marillac Clinic. The clinic will hire counselors and case managers, and will use a model of family health care that emphasizes communication between medical and mental health providers.

The researchers point out that psychiatric disorders may lead to higher rates of disability which then lead to futher poverty. Medical illnesses may be complicated and even caused by psychiatric disorders. Self-care and well-being may decrease as a psychiatric disorder goes untreated. Low-income, uninsured patients want help. Primary care facilities can give them that help by assessing for psychiatric problems, helping patients find proper psychiatric treatment, and keeping communication open with mental health providers.

Reference: Mauksch LB, Tucker SM, Katon WJ, Russo J, Cameron J, Walker E, Spitzer R (2001), Mental illness, functional impairment, and patient preferences for collaborative care in an uninsured, primary care population. J Fam Pract 50(1).

Superman wrote:All you are doing is showing your ignorance on this subject. You were ignorant of the fundamental fact that poverty and mental illness go hand in hand. You then say, "well this is why that is" (in a concession, I might add) despite the fact that it's a hot debate among doctoral researchers to this day. You then use "psychopathy" and "sociopathy" as if these terms are synonymous with psychopathology, only further showing your ignorance. It's sort of funny, because I think you managed to mention two disorders, maybe the only two, which are NOT strongly correlated with poorer people.

Shall I take your concession or do you have a larger hole to dig?

Methodological flaws include using ZIP codes to determine economic level and a lack of diagnostic interviews with patients.

This week, a Massachusetts researcher published possibly the broadest study yet on the question, examining tens of thousands of hospital records statewide to see whether patients who were hospitalized for mental illness then ''drifted down" to less affluent ZIP codes.

I would also add that state hospitals are where people who can't afford private clinics and rehab go, meaning upper economic levels will not be represented at all.

Nothing here to indicate that the predisposition to mental illness itself is related to being white trash, only that being impoverished is one of many stressors that will bring out the predisposition. Nothing to link heredity to poverty. Strong indication that being wealthy can keep one from becoming a recorded mental stat.

Britney is rich and still messed up, despite coming from a middle class background that offered decent economic security.

Again, poverty 'causes' mental illness by introducing stress. Nothing to indicate that precursors would not exist in a wealthier demographic. Nothing to link heredity to poverty. Strong indication that being wealthy can keep one from becoming a recorded mental stat, because it removes a source of stress. Doesn't touch on the stress of being papparnazi bait.

Again, no indication that being in an upper economic demographic precludes having predisposition to mental illness, only that it will result it better care if identified where recorded, and that the absence of a source of stress will result in better mental health.

The studies don't deal with antisocial disorders. Only one may have touched on effects on parenting ability; aboriginal delinquency goes down as income and job opportunities go up.

Britney's kids will have plenty of money if they stay with their mother.

Poverty may exacerbate an existing problem and cause it to manifest, but is also one of many sources of stress that may do so.

Also, antisocial disorders don't preclude being able to function passably in society, so there is no reason short of committing criminal offenses for a sufferer to seek diagnosis and treatment.

The studies don't deal with the stress of being a wealthy celebrity, either.

They do not indicate that a predisposition to antisocial behavior isn't evenly distributed in the general population, or even that wealth and education mitigate their expression.

Only expressed cases from a handful of common disorders were sampled from what appear to be publicly funded facilities. If Britney went for treatment for any of them at a private facility out of her own pocket, she would not figure in any such study.

They do tell me that Britney's kids are better off with the parent with more money if they have a predisposition to the mental illnesses covered.

General Brock wrote:As far as I'm concerned the chicken and egg question is not resolved.

Poverty brings out a pre-existing condition because it introduces psychological stress. D'uh. Thats the basis for your contention that Britney is an unfit parent and her kids are better off with a lower primate in a zoo?

If poverty and mental illness go hand in hand, why is rich Britney a source of ire for you? Is it because she disproves the theory? As far as I can tell, the only illness she qualifies for is a post-natal mood disorder. Lots of women get that, and they don't have to be white trash.

And before you put words in my mouth, er letters on my screen, again... I never said any of these represent absolutes. There are always exceptions. It's a matter of the VAST majority.

I'm not conceding anything to your classist elitist attitude. Why are you even in the health care profession? You certainly don't have the heart for it.

Superman wrote:

General Brock wrote:As far as I'm concerned the chicken and egg question is not resolved.

Thank you for conceding my point, Captain Obvious. Next time, you might want to realize that saying what you're opponent has been saying for the last two pages isn't exactly the way to debate. At any rate, you're strawmanning again.

Poverty brings out a pre-existing condition because it introduces psychological stress. D'uh. Thats the basis for your contention that Britney is an unfit parent and her kids are better off with a lower primate in a zoo?

How old are you, 12?

If poverty and mental illness go hand in hand, why is rich Britney a source of ire for you? Is it because she disproves the theory? As far as I can tell, the only illness she qualifies for is a post-natal mood disorder. Lots of women get that, and they don't have to be white trash.

Again, I never said that poor white trash are exclusively the people who breed like rabbits, screw them up, then have society clean up the mess. They're just 98% of the mess. And I take back the Captain Obvious part... You're clearly Captain Strawman.

I'm not conceding anything to your classist elitist attitude. Why are you even in the health care profession? You certainly don't have the heart for it.

You don't have to concede. You lost.

It takes more than heart, it also takes having a fucking brain. I feel sorry for the kids who are subjugated to these parents. I feel sorry for the parents who perpetuate their abusive backgrounds too, but that doesn't excuse them from reality. I feel sorry for people in prison as well; their acting out and criminal behavior probably has much to do with their crappy backgrounds, but they still have to pay for their actions.

Men who target young children for molestation typically do so because this was done to them as children. The drive center of their libido was 'tweaked,' and they suffer from a compulsion to have sex with kids. On one level, of course you feel sorry for them, on another, you realize it's probably too late and try to keep everyone else out of the way of the collateral damage.

Darth Wong wrote:In other words, Brock thinks that if the article explains why poverty is linked to mental illness, then it's not really linked to mental illness. Apparently, if poverty is only a "stressor" which interacts with a "predisposition" toward mental illness, then that is not a connection at all. Never mind the fact that you could say the exact same thing about, say, PTSD. What an evasive little fuckwad.

Time for a Senate hearing.

Darth Wong wrote:You're a fucking twat. So full of arrogance and pride that you'd rather be banned than admit a mistake.

General Brock wrote:I've made several mistakes; I sense them but can't see them. Even now, I refuse to admit wrong, because somewhere in there I think something was right.

Lord Zentei wrote:

General Brock wrote:I've made several mistakes; I sense them but can't see them. Even now, I refuse to admit wrong, because somewhere in there I think something was right.

Wait... you know that you have made mistakes, but refuse to admit that you are wrong? Sure, something may have been right in there, that doesn't eliminate the mistakes, though, does it?

Why are you taking this course of action? Seriously, what's the point of it?

Darth Wong wrote:Brock is employing a rather obvious fallacy, in which he believes that the existence of shitty upper-class brats somehow disproves the phenomenon of ignorant redneck trailer-trash. His logic looks like this:

"If any members of group A exhibit behaviour X, then you cannot associate behaviour X with group B".

General Brock wrote:I don't follow the celebrity soap operas apart from surfing into headlines and critiques of the tabloid media. So, taking a real woman's kids and throwing them to zoo chimpanzees for gawkers to throw peanuts at, then sewing her vagina shut, isn't humour I'm even remotely preconditioned to laugh at.

Being hectored down to on personality and mood disorders by the poster making a misogynistic joke and being expected to laugh along, add to that my perception of a racist eugenics subtext, add to that he actually works in health care and should understand something of the issues, was too much. Add to that a lot of other issues rattling in my head. I lost any perspective of distance and restraint.

My on-and-off amateur following of personality disorders in relation to society demanded some response. I vaguely realized the dominoes were tipping, and coherently focusing on a target was impossible. I still didn't back off. I lost my temper, lashed out heedless of reason, and couldn't do a thing about it, though I tried to impose some self-moderation. My opposition to a misanthropic treatment of difficult human situations was the right position to take, even though I turned out to be the absolutely wrong person to try and to hold it.

It is pride motivating me now. I don't want another meltdown to happen again, my posting history and a realistic self-assessment tells me it will. For the good of the board, half-ways consistent quality posters are important, and I can't deliver and won't take a hint when fired stupid. A permanent ban is inevitable at some point, and non-board life concerns press. As such, that ban may as well happen now as later.

General Brock wrote:Limbic responses don't seem to work well in a debate. They only work physical situations, and even then only through trained techniques. I'm not trained in debate. Sometimes I can get away with a passioned response, because I remember just enough about a subject and my limits within it. I can say what I need to say, sometimes. Also, debate as I think I see it sometimes practiced; the winning and scoring of points rather than illuminating an issue, doesn't sit well. Its just not my sport. When a commentary sets off something beyond discussion, sometimes the notion of debate completely deserts me.

I don't follow the celebrity soap operas apart from surfing into headlines and critiques of the tabloid media. So, taking a real woman's kids and throwing them to zoo chimpanzees for gawkers to throw peanuts at, then sewing her vagina shut, isn't humour I'm even remotely preconditioned to laugh at. Being hectored down to on personality and mood disorders by the poster making a misogynistic joke and being expected to laugh along, add to that my perception of a racist eugenics subtext, add to that he actually works in health care and should understand something of the issues, was too much. Add to that a lot of other issues rattling in my head. I lost any perspective of distance and restraint.

My on-and-off amateur following of personality disorders in relation to society demanded some response. I vaguely realized the dominoes were tipping, and coherently focusing on a target was impossible. I still didn't back off. I lost my temper, lashed out heedless of reason, and couldn't do a thing about it, though I tried to impose some self-moderation. My opposition to a misanthropic treatment of difficult human situations was the right position to take, even though I turned out to be the absolutely wrong person to try and to hold it.

I concede nothing except my own ineptitude. It is an unacceptable shame to be a liability to a worthy position. I wasn't debating, I was a ranting idiot rabid to tear out the throat of another. A cooling off period is in order, and more than that. Sure, people make mistakes and aren't perfect. Still, there must be standards.

It is pride motivating me now. I don't want another meltdown to happen again, my posting history and a realistic self-assessment tells me it will. For the good of the board, half-ways consistent quality posters are important, and I can't deliver and won't take a hint when fired stupid. A permanent ban is inevitable at some point, and non-board life concerns press. As such, that ban may as well happen now as later.