Does social capital and a healthier lifestyle increase mental health resilience to disability acquisition? Group-based discrete trajectory mixture models of pre-post longitudinal data

A.H.M. Mehbub Anwar, Thomas Astell-Burt and Xiaoqi Feng

Social Science & Medicine, 2019, vol. 235, issue C, -

Abstract: Poor mental health is strongly associated with disability acquisition. Social capital and healthier lifestyles pre-disability onset may help promote mental health resilience (i.e. a state of seemingly being unaffected by the event), or the capacity to ‘bounce back’, post-acquisition. This paper used a novel methodology (discrete trajectory mixture models) to examine discrete trajectories in mental health before and after disability acquisition in the Household Income Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey. Group membership in association with pre-onset social capital and healthy lifestyles were then examined using multinomial logistic regressions. Four discrete trajectory groups were identified in 2904 Australians reporting onset of ongoing disability, with about 28.4% demonstrating mental health resilience. Three other groups were identified, each demonstrating increasingly severe reductions in mental health. No clear ‘bounce back’ group was observed. Group membership was associated with participants who felt they had ‘no-help from others’ prior to disability acquisition. Pre-disability acquisition measures of social capital and unhealthy behaviours moderated the association between disability acquisition and mental health trajectories. Social capital was protective only for the respondents who had poorer mental health before disability onset and had less resilience after onset, and long working hours and less resilience were positively associated. Public policies that help to enhance levels of social capital and reduce unhealthy behaviours at a population level may help to promote mental health resilience to adversities such as the acquisition of disability.

Keywords: Mental health; Disability; Discrete trajectory mixture model; Social capital; Health-related behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953619300450
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:235:y:2019:i:c:13

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
http://www.elsevier. ... _01_ooc_1&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.01.045

Access Statistics for this article

Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian

More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().