Saturday, October 10, 2020

Why are people who are poor more likely to have mental health issues?

The health of people with low incomes often suffers because they can’t afford adequate housing, food, or child care. Such living conditions, and the stress they cause, can lead to higher rates of  tobacco and alcohol use and increase the risk of health problems developing or worsening over time.

An overwhelming majority of people with mental and psychosocial disabilities are living in poverty, poor physical health, and are subject to human rights violations.


Mental health issues cannot be considered in isolation from other areas of development, such as education, employment, emergency responses and human rights capacity building.

There is a bidirectional causal relationship between poverty and common mental illnesses—depression and anxiety—and the underlying mechanisms.

A new Science Magazine review examines the literature on natural and controlled economic experiments involving individuals living in poverty.

Research shows that mental illness reduces employment and therefore income, and that psychological interventions generate economic gains. Similarly, negative economic shocks cause mental illness, and antipoverty programs such as cash transfers improve mental health. A crucial step toward the design of effective policies is to better understand the mechanisms underlying these causal effects.
https://www.commonwealthfund.org/
https://www.who.int/

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