Does poor mental health decrease your job prospects?

Conventional wisdom holds that individuals with serious mental illenesses will have more difficulty acquiring and retaining a job.  Measuring the magnitude of the effect of any mental illness on employment empirically is difficult because of a dual-causality problem.  People with mental illnesses may have difficulty gaining employment, but losing employment also has an adverse effect on…

Disparities in Schizophrenia Care

Do African Americans and Latinos receive the same quality care as Caucasians?  This is the question asked by Horvitz-Lennon et al. (2014). Quality of Care Before one can answer this question, one first has to define what “quality care” means.  The authors use the following definition for pharmacological indicators: Any use of antipsychotic drugs, Conditional on…

Can you inherit a mental illness?

According to this JHE study by Johnston, Schurer and Shileds, the answer is ‘yes’. Importantly, we estimate an intergenerational correlation coefficient in mental health of 0.190, which means that a one-standard-deviation decrease in maternal mental health (measured when the cohort member was a child) is associated with a 0.19 standard deviation decrease in the child’s…

The Decline of Mental Hospitals, 1950s

The movement of mental health care from mental hospitals to treatment in outpatient settings and nursing homes  began in the 1950s.  Here is how it happened. “The field of medicine where the ‘rediscovery of community’ found an immediately welcome reception was mental health services.  A movement away from mental hospitals had already begun in the…

On Being Sane in Insane Places

Can you tell if someone is insane?  Maybe, maybe not.  On the other hand, can you tell if someone is sane.   Are these questions the same? Let’s be more specific.  Can you identify a insane person while walking around your neighborhood?  On the other hand, could you identify a sane person in a psychiatric…