'Less wealthy people are more likely to have mental health disorders'

HELSINKI: According to a study published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, people from less affluent backgrounds are far more likely to experience mental health issues later in life than people from more affluent ones.

Furthermore, according to a Finnish study, more than half of those with poor educational attainment at the age of 30 will be diagnosed with a mental disease 22 years later.

Previous research has revealed a link between socioeconomic status and the prevalence of mental diseases, but the significance of various indicators of socioeconomic status has rarely been compared.

A team of researchers from Finland analysed official national data on more than 1.2 million of the population born between 1966 and 1986 who were living in Finland when they turned 30.

They set out to investigate the association between socioeconomic position at the age of 30 and the subsequent risk of the most common major mental disorders – substance misuse, schizophrenia, mood, and anxiety disorders.

They used three register-based measures for socioeconomic position, namely, educational attainment, employment status, and personal total income while also taking into account shared family characteristics that have an impact.

The study’s population was followed between 1996 and 2017 and just over a quarter (26.1 per cent) of them (331,657) were diagnosed with a mental disorder during the study’s follow-up period.

The researchers’ analysis showed that a lower socioeconomic position at age 30 was consistently associated with a higher risk of being later diagnosed with a mental disorder, even after taking into account shared family characteristics and prior history of a mental disorder.

Analyses of specific diagnoses revealed that the associations were considerably stronger when substance misuse or schizophrenia spectrum disorders were used as an outcome.

Compared with people who were employed, being outside the labour force or unemployed were both associated with a twofold risk of a later mental disorder diagnosis, they said.

They also found that, by the age of 52 years, 58 per cent of people who had low educational attainment at the age of 30 were later diagnosed with a mental disorder, compared with 45 per cent and 36 per cent of people who had completed secondary or higher education, respectively.

This was an observational study, and as such, can’t establish cause.

Moreover, the study had some limitations such as the fact that the registers covered long-term sickness absences and primary care only starting from 2005 and 2011 respectively, which meant that it was likely mental disorders of those people with milder symptoms, who were only treated by a GP before the year 2005 or who did not seek help from any type of healthcare service for their mental disorders, were omitted.

Therefore, the information used on mental disorders before the age of 30 was an underestimate of the underlying prevalence of these conditions.

Nevertheless, the researchers highlighted the fact that using a nationwide study population with complete follow-up, sibling design, and both secondary and primary care psychiatric register data were strengths of their study.

The researchers concluded: “These findings suggest that the burden of mental disorders is vastly greater among persons with low socioeconomic position, and policies enhancing social mobility or allocating greater amounts of preventive measures to persons with low socio-economic position could mitigate the disease burden of mental disorders in the society.”