Neighborhood Poverty & Mental Health of Low-income Mothers: An Experimental Study

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案寻求支持扩大对创新社会政策/实验的评价，以包括考虑干预措施对参与者心理健康的影响。走向机会（MTO）示范使用随机抽签，为一些公共住房家庭提供机会，而不是其他家庭，使用租赁住房补贴搬迁到条件较好的社区。因此，该计划实验性地产生了很大的差异，在住宅区的特点，否则可比组的低收入家庭。随机化后约5年的一项随访研究发现，治疗组的女性严重精神疾病（SMI）的估计患病率显著低于对照组。然而，这些结果不是基于诊断访谈，这使得无法区分对特定疾病的发作、持续性和严重程度的影响或影响发生的途径。这项提案寻求资金，以扩大一个新的后续调查的4498 MTO母亲约10年后，随机分配，包括明确的评估DSM-IV疾病，以解决以下问题：1。在总样本和由基线风险因素定义的子样本中，搬到一个不那么不利的社区对DSM-IV精神障碍的发作和持续性有什么影响？2.这些综合心理健康影响发生的途径是什么？3.邻里流动性对心理健康的影响如何具体说明干预对与工作、家庭、教育、犯罪参与和基本决策有关的其他结果的影响？拟议研究的总体目标是尽可能多地了解社区影响心理健康的过程。我们还致力于将我们的数据提供给医学和社会科学领域的其他研究人员。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal seeks support for an expansion of the evaluation of an innovative social policy/experiment to include consideration of the impact of the intervention on the mental health of participants. The Moving to Opportunity (MTO) demonstration used a randomized lottery to offer some public housing families but not others the chance to relocate to less disadvantaged neighborhoods using a rental housing subsidy. The program thus experimentally generated large differences in residential neighborhood characteristics for otherwise comparable groups of low-income families. A follow-up study approximately 5 years after randomization found that the women in the treatment groups had a significantly lower estimated prevalence of Serious Mental Illness (SMI) than controls. However these results were not based on a diagnostic interview, which made it impossible to distinguish effects on onset, persistence, and severity of particular disorders or the pathways through which effects occurred. This proposal seeks funding to expand a new follow-up survey of 4498 MTO mothers approximately 10 years after random assignment to include an explicit assessment of DSM-IV disorders, in order to address the following questions: 1. What are the effects of moving to a less disadvantaged neighborhood on the onset and persistence of DSM-IV mental disorders both in the total sample and in sub-samples defined by baseline risk factors? 2. What are the pathways through which these aggregate mental health effects occurred? 3. How do the effects of neighborhood mobility on mental health specify the effects of the intervention on other outcomes related to work, family, schooling, criminal involvement, and basic decision making? The overarching goal of the proposed research is to understand as much as possible about the processes by which neighborhoods affect mental health. We are also committed to making our data available to other researchers in the medical and social sciences.