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Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress

PURPOSE: Previous research on time trends of young people’s mental health in Britain has produced conflicting findings: evidence for deterioration in mental health during the late 20th century followed by stability and slight improvement during the early 21st century is contrasted with evidence show...

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Autores principales: Ross, Andy, Kelly, Yvonne, Sacker, Amanda
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5581824/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28698927
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1419-4
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author Ross, Andy
Kelly, Yvonne
Sacker, Amanda
author_facet Ross, Andy
Kelly, Yvonne
Sacker, Amanda
author_sort Ross, Andy
collection PubMed
description PURPOSE: Previous research on time trends of young people’s mental health in Britain has produced conflicting findings: evidence for deterioration in mental health during the late 20th century followed by stability and slight improvement during the early 21st century is contrasted with evidence showing continued deterioration. The present study adds to the evidence base by assessing time trends in means, variances, and both low and high psychological distress scores covering a similar period. METHODS: GHQ-12 (Likert scale) was regressed on time (adjusting for age) using a sample of young people aged 16–24 between 1991 and 2008 from the British Household Panel Study. Change in variance was assessed using Levene’s homogeneity of variance test across 9-year intervals. Polarisation was assessed by a comparison of the prevalence of scores ≥1 standard deviation and ≥1.5 standard deviations above and below the pooled mean. RESULTS: There was a small but significant increase in mean GHQ-12 among young women (b 0.048; 95% CI 0.016, 0.080) only. Variance increased significantly (p < 0.05) across 9-year intervals in seven out of nine comparisons for women and in six out of nine comparisons for men. There were significant increases in low (OR: 1.19; 95% CI 1.05, 1.35), high (OR: 1.27; 95% CI 1.13, 1.42), and very high scores (OR: 1.42; 95% CI 1.23, 1.64) for young women, and increases in low (OR: 1.39; 95% CI 1.21, 1.59) and very low (OR: 1.53; 95% CI 1.21, 1.92) scores for young men. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence suggests a polarisation of the psychological distress of young women in Britain between 1991 and 2008.
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spelling pubmed-55818242017-09-19 Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress Ross, Andy Kelly, Yvonne Sacker, Amanda Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol Original Paper PURPOSE: Previous research on time trends of young people’s mental health in Britain has produced conflicting findings: evidence for deterioration in mental health during the late 20th century followed by stability and slight improvement during the early 21st century is contrasted with evidence showing continued deterioration. The present study adds to the evidence base by assessing time trends in means, variances, and both low and high psychological distress scores covering a similar period. METHODS: GHQ-12 (Likert scale) was regressed on time (adjusting for age) using a sample of young people aged 16–24 between 1991 and 2008 from the British Household Panel Study. Change in variance was assessed using Levene’s homogeneity of variance test across 9-year intervals. Polarisation was assessed by a comparison of the prevalence of scores ≥1 standard deviation and ≥1.5 standard deviations above and below the pooled mean. RESULTS: There was a small but significant increase in mean GHQ-12 among young women (b 0.048; 95% CI 0.016, 0.080) only. Variance increased significantly (p < 0.05) across 9-year intervals in seven out of nine comparisons for women and in six out of nine comparisons for men. There were significant increases in low (OR: 1.19; 95% CI 1.05, 1.35), high (OR: 1.27; 95% CI 1.13, 1.42), and very high scores (OR: 1.42; 95% CI 1.23, 1.64) for young women, and increases in low (OR: 1.39; 95% CI 1.21, 1.59) and very low (OR: 1.53; 95% CI 1.21, 1.92) scores for young men. CONCLUSIONS: The evidence suggests a polarisation of the psychological distress of young women in Britain between 1991 and 2008. Springer Berlin Heidelberg 2017-07-11 2017 /pmc/articles/PMC5581824/ /pubmed/28698927 http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1419-4 Text en © The Author(s) 2017 Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.
spellingShingle Original Paper
Ross, Andy
Kelly, Yvonne
Sacker, Amanda
Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
title Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
title_full Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
title_fullStr Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
title_full_unstemmed Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
title_short Time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
title_sort time trends in mental well-being: the polarisation of young people’s psychological distress
topic Original Paper
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5581824/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28698927
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s00127-017-1419-4
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