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Biomedical subjects

Richard Miech

Publications and source records attributed to Richard Miech.

4 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed2006

Disparities in psychological distress across education and sex: a longitudinal analysis of their persistence within a cohort over 19 years.

PURPOSE: Disparities in psychological distress across socioeconomic status and sex persist throughout adulthood as cohorts age. In this study, we investigate the extent to which this persistence represents either (i) a single set of individuals who at the start of adulthood show distress that is chronic and long lasting or (ii) different sets of individuals that have a staggered onset of short-term distress throughout adulthood. METHODS: We use path analysis on data from the National Child Development Study, a longitudinal cohort study that assessed psychological distress at ages 23, 33, and 42 years. RESULTS: About 80% of distress disparities at age 42 result from chronic distress that was present in a single set of individuals at least 19 years earlier at the beginning of adulthood. CONCLUSIONS: These results support a targeted approach to the reduction of distress disparities that focuses on young adults with high levels of distress and seeks to improve their long-term mental health.

Adult↗
PubMed2005

Maternal education and adolescent drug use: a longitudinal analysis of causation and selection over a generation.

Current evidence indicates that in the USA illegal drug use among adolescents between the 1980s and 1990s became significantly more prevalent in families with lower maternal education in comparison to families with higher maternal education. In this study, we examine whether this inter-generational change results from either (a) a changing influence of socioeconomic status on drug use, as predicted by the inter-generational social 'causation' hypothesis, or (b) a negative influence of drug use on socioeconomic status, as predicted by the inter-generational social 'selection/drift' hypothesis. The analyses are based on the US National Longitudinal Study of 1979, which includes information on drug use for both a nationally representative sample of respondents aged 19-27 in 1984, as well as drug use information for the children of these respondents, who were aged 18-27 in 1998. The results indicate that inter-generation change in cocaine and marijuana use resulted almost entirely from social causation. These findings support illegal drug use as a good candidate for analyses in the 'fundamental cause' tradition that seek to understand the social factors that concentrate poor health and health behaviors in the lower social strata over historical time.

Adolescent↗
PubMedDate not supplied

Child functioning in rural and nonrural areas: how does it compare when using the service program site as the level of analysis?

The current study uses data from the national evaluation of the Comprehensive Community Mental Health Services for Children and Their Families Program to examine child functioning in rural (n = 8) as compared to nonrural (n = 18) system-of-care communities across the United States. In this study, the topic of rural versus nonrural differences is approached from a community-level perspective with aggregated functional impairment scores as the dependent variable of interest in weighted least squares regression. The demographic characteristics of children, particularly age, were more important predictors of functional impairment than geographic locale (i.e., rural vs nonrural). Specifically, while children served in nonrural communities were older than those served in rural communities, after controlling for this difference functional impairment levels were similar. It appears from these analyses that youth served in rural and nonrural communities with systems of care were more similar than they were different with regard to their level of functional impairment. This lack of aggregate functional difference between the rural and nonrural sites reminds policymakers and funding agents that youth in rural areas need equity in both access and resource for mental health services. As indicated by the findings in the current investigation youth in rural areas are not immune to the types of mental health challenges often publicized by researchers examining youth in nonrural areas.

Adolescent↗