The role of socio-economic status and life style characteristics in depression: NHANES 2013-2014 Open Access

Tang, Ruoyi (Spring 2018)

Permanent URL: https://etd.library.emory.edu/concern/etds/sx61dm316?locale=en
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Abstract

      During 2009-2012, 7.6% of Americans aged 12 and over had symptoms of depression that had lasted for at least two weeks. Given the burden of depression in the United States and limited published information after 2012, this cross-sectional study focused on a broad range of descriptive statistics to investigate the exposure-disease relationship for depression among the U.S. population during 2013-2014. Risk factors including socio-economic status (composed of education, occupation and family monthly poverty level index) and life style characteristics (composed of smoking, alcohol and marijuana/hashish consumption), and mental health-depression severity were measured for 5393 noninstitutionalized U.S. citizens through self-reported questionnaires by NHANES. The severity of depression and presence of major depression disorder were described as continuous and dichotomized variables, respectively. ANOVA was used to test the differences in levels of depression severity among subgroups for each predictor. Linear regression models were built to assess the correlation between predictors and severity of depression; the association between predictors and odds of major depression disorder were assessed by constructing logistic regression models. Both models were adjusted for demographic characteristics (composed of sex, age and race). When considering each predictor separately adjusted for sex, age and race, the severity of depression was significantly associated with education, occupation, family monthly poverty level index, smoking and marijuana/hashish use. The odds of major depression disorder were significantly associated with education, occupation, family monthly poverty level index, smoking (only smoking everyday vs. no smoking) and marijuana/hashish use as well. When considering the combined effect, a significant negative correlation was found with education and occupation, holding other factors constant. The odds of major depression disorder of people with higher degree of education (only high level vs. low level) or with a job were also significantly lower. Significant positive association was found between the severity of depression and smoking as well as marijuana/hashish use, holding other factors constant.

 

 

Table of Contents

1. INTRODUCTION-----------------------------------------1

2. METHODS-------------------------------------------------3

2.1 Hypothesis-------------------------------------------------3

2.2 Study Design----------------------------------------------3

2.3 Data Collection-------------------------------------------3

2.4 Statistical Analysis---------------------------------------4

3. RESULTS--------------------------------------------------5

3.1 Study Population and Demographics------------------5

3.2 ANOVA---------------------------------------------------7

3.3 Linear Regression Model-------------------------------9

3.4 Logistoc Regression Model----------------------------10

4. DISCUSSION---------------------------------------------12

5. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS---14

6. REFERENCES--------------------------------------------15

 

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