Register for email alerts and news feeds:
This journal | BMJ Group
rss
Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health 2006;60:766-770; doi:10.1136/jech.2006.042069
Copyright © 2006 by the BMJ Publishing Group Ltd.

RESEARCH REPORT

Social context and depression after a disaster: the role of income inequality

Jennifer Ahern1,2, Sandro Galea2

1 Division of Epidemiology, University of California at Berkeley School of Public Health, Berkeley, USA
2 Department of Epidemiology, University of Michigan, School of Public Health, Ann Arbor, USA

Correspondence to:
Correspondence to:
Dr J Ahern
Division of Epidemiology, School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, 140 Warren Hall, Berkeley, CA 94720-7636, USA; jahern{at}berkeley.edu

Study objective: To examine the association between neighbourhood income inequality and depression, both overall and among those with different levels of income, in the post-disaster context.

Design: A representative cross sectional random digit dial telephone survey was conducted.

Setting: New York City (NYC) six months after September 11, 2001.

Participants: 1570 respondents were interviewed, of whom 1355 provided residence information permitting their inclusion in this analysis. Past six month depression was assessed using a lay administered instrument consistent with DSM-IV criteria. Income inequality was measured with the Gini coefficient.

Main results: The sample was demographically representative of NYC (56.2% female, 35.7% white, 6.3% Asian 24.2% African American, 29.7% Hispanic, and 4.2% other race or ethnicity) and the prevalence of past six month depression was 12.4%. In a final adjusted model, neighbourhood level income inequality was positively associated with depression but this association was not significant (ß = 7.58, p = 0.1). However, among those with low individual income (<$20 000) there was a strong significant association between income inequality and depression (ß = 35.02, p<0.01), while there was no association among those with higher income.

Conclusions: In the post-disaster context, neighbourhood level income inequality was associated with depression among persons with lower income; this group may be more socially or economically marginalised and dependent on local resources. Future research should examine potential mechanisms through which income inequality and other features of the social context may affect mental health in the post-disaster context.

Keywords: depression; neighbourhood; income inequality; Gini coefficient; disaster


Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati    What's this?

Relevant Article

In this issue
Carlos Alvarez-Dardet, John R Ashton
J Epidemiol Community Health 2006 60: 737. [Extract] [Full Text] [PDF]

This Article

Services
Citing Articles
Google Scholar
PubMed
Topic Collections
Bookmark with

Register for free content

The full back archive is now available for all BMJ Journals. Institutional subscribers may access the entire archive as part of their subscription. Personal subscribers will also have access to all content when logged in. Non-subscribers who register have free access to all articles published before 2006 right back to volume 1 issue 1. Register here to access the free archive of all BMJ Journals.

Don't forget to sign up for content alerts so you keep up to date with all the articles as they are published.

BMJ Careers - Latest infectious diseases and epidemilogy jobs

Infectious diseases and epidemilogy jobs