Subjective Mental Health Research Articles

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The life situations of four elderly ex-offenders are described, prior to the criminal act, during incarceration and following confinement. Offenses ranged from murder to stealing to writing bad checks. Information was derived from indepth interviews. Such themes as present economic needs and stigma emerge. The subject's physical and mental health was a significant variable in their present well being. With the number of elderly offenders and former offenders growing, this is an important population for social work.

Does emotionality predict stress? Findings from the normative aging study.

Investigated whether emotionality, assessed in 1975, predicted the reporting of both objective stress (life events) and subjective stress (hassles) 10 years later, and how emotionality affected the relation between both objective and subjective stress and mental health. The sample consisted of 1,159 older men, participants in the Normative Aging Study. Path analysis revealed that the reporting of stress was confounded with personality: Individuals higher in emotionality reported both more life events and more hassles. Furthermore, individuals higher in emotionality exhibited slightly higher levels of symptoms under stress than did individuals lower in emotionality. Nonetheless, both stress measures contributed independent variance to the prediction of psychological symptoms, even controlling for prior levels of emotionality. Implications for the assessment of stress are discussed.

Intimacy motivation and subjective mental health in a nationwide sample.

Over 1,200 adults in a representative nationwide sample were administered the Thematic Apperception Test (TAT) and an unstructured interview which produced 25 measures of subjective mental health and ultimately six factor scores: unhappiness, lack of gratification, strain, feelings of vulnerability, lack of self-confidence, and uncertainty. The TATs were scored for intimacy motivation (McAdams, 1980)--a recurrent preference or readiness for experiences of warm, close, and communicative interaction with others. Controlling for age, education, and their interaction, high intimacy motivation in women was associated with greater happiness and gratification, whereas in men it was associated with lack of strain and lack of uncertainty. Women high in intimacy motivation who were living alone reported lower levels of gratification and more uncertainty in their lives than other women. Intimacy motivation also declined significantly over the life span for women, but not for men. Finally, demographic effects on intimacy motivation were examined. Controlling for age, education, and their interaction, professional men (e.g., doctors, lawyers, and teachers) scored higher on intimacy motivation than did men in other occupational categories, while among women the occupational groups with highest intimacy motivation were service workers and craftspersons.

Educational Status and the Structure of Subjective Well-Being in Men and Women

This study used confirmatory factor analysis with national survey data to explore how educational status affects the criteria men and women use to evaluate their subjective well-being. A recently developed six-factor model of subjective mental health (Bryant and Veroff, 1984) was used to evaluate separately the educational differences in the structure of well-being for men and women. Although the structure of women's self-evaluations did not differ significantly according to educational status, college-educated men structured their self-evaluations differently than did either grade schoolor high school-educated men. Specifically, college-educated men expressedfeelings of vulnerability and reactions to stress in more psychological terms, such as feelings of nervous breakdown and anxiety, whereas grade schooland high school-educated men defined these judgments more exclusively in terms of physical symptoms. In addition, dissatisfaction and self-doubt were more indicative of uncertainty toward the future among college-educated men than among either grade schoolor high school-educated men. It is argued that college may sensitize men to mental health issues and may thereby broaden the realm of psychological criteria that they consider relevant for their self-evaluations. Because women, in contrast, may already be sensitive to these issues due to sex-role socialization, higher education may have relatively little structural impact on their subjective well-being and may instead influence other aspects of adjustment.

Erratum: Dimensions of Subjective Mental Health in American Men and Women

Erratum: Dimensions of Subjective Mental Health in American Men and Women

Dimensions of Subjective Mental Health in American Men and Women

Confirmatory factor analyses were used to map dimensions of subjective mental health underlying 25 indexes of well-being and distress assessed in a 1976 national representative survey of adults. Partially confirming hypotheses, six dominant factors (Unhappiness, Lack of Gratification, Strain, Feelings of Vulnerability, Lack of Self-Confidence, and Uncertainty) emergedfor both men and women. Comparative analyses revealed that the six-factor model derived for men fit the data of both sexes, equally well. Thus, this model provides a means of assessing men's and women's self-evaluations comparably. Multiple regression analyses demonstrated the divergent validity of the dimensions in the model by differentially relating certain demographic and behavioral measures to the various factors. Four critical theoretical issues were discussed as underlying measures of subjective mental health: affective orientation (positive vs. negative), object offocus (world vs. self), time referent (past vs. present vs. future), and mode of reaction (spontaneous vs. reflective).

Environmental Pollution and Health Problems of Workers in Tobacco Industries

The effect of environmental pollution on subjective and mental health of the workers in tobacco industries has been investigated. A total of 540 workers, 340 from tobacco (polluted) industries and the remaining 200 from non-tobacco industries, were selected using simple random sampling technique. Workers included in the sample were interviewed with three measuring instruments: (a) The Inventory of Subjective Health, (b) The General Health Questionnaire and (c) The Interview Schedule on Personal and Health Related Questionnaire. The results showed that the workers of tobacco industries suffered more from subjective health and mental health related problems than those of the non-tobacco industries. The older (≥20 yrs) workers perceived relatively better subjective health than the younger (<20 yrs) whereas latter perceived better mental health than the former. Male workers were found to have better subjective and mental health compared to the female workers, and the unmarried workers had better mental health than the married workers. Moreover, unhygienic home environment, malnutrition, lack of health care facilities, use of raw materials, anxiety, tension and job dissatisfaction were some of the health risk factors as perceived by majority respondents of tobacco industries than that of the non-tobacco industries. Key words: Pollution; subjective health; mental health; tobacco industry DOI: 10.3329/jles.v3i0.7439 J. Life Earth Sci., Vols. 3-4: 13-17, 2009