Felt Obligation to Help Others as a Protective Factor Against Losses in Psychological Well-being Following Functional Decline in Middle and Later Life

Emily A. Greenfield

This study examined felt obligation to help others in two domains (close others and society) as protective factors against losses in psychological well-being following functional decline.
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Perceived Need for Mental Health Care Among Community-Dwelling Older Adults

Melissa M. Garrido, Robert L. Kane, Merrie Kaas, and Rosalie A. Kane

Only half of older adults with a mental disorder use mental health services, and little is known about the causes of perceived need for mental health care (MHC). We used logistic regression to examine relationships among depression, anxiety, chronic physical illness, alcohol abuse and/or dependence, sociodemographics, and perceived need among a national sample of community-dwelling individuals 65 years of age and older (the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys data set).
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Completing Costs: Patients’ Time

Louise B. Russell

Every patient knows that taking care of one’s health and seeking medical care takes time, sometimes lots of it. Yet those who study the medical system rarely recognize the burden time requirements can be for patients.
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Will More Prevention Lower Medical Spending?

Louise B. Russell

Many people believe that prevention reduces medical spending, despite four decades of studies showing that it rarely does. Preventive interventions are often worth the additional cost, but each must be evaluated on its own merits.

Professor Louise Russell provides additional information on this topic:

Louise Russell, “Prevention Will Reduce Medical Costs: A Persistent Myth,” The Health Care Cost Monitor, June 17, 2009.
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Childhood Physical Abuse and Midlife Physical Health: Testing a Multi-Pathway Life Course Model

Kristen W. Springer

Although prior research has established that childhood abuse adversely affects midlife physical health, it is unclear how abuse continues to harm health decades after the abuse has ended.
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Violence from Parents in Childhood and Obesity in Adulthood: Using Food in Response to Stress as a Mediator of Risk

Emily A. Greenfield and Nadine F. Marks

Guided by a life course perspective and concepts from models of stress and coping, this study tested the extent to which self-reported profiles of physical and psychological violence in childhood from parents were associated with greater odds of obesity in adulthood.
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"Race" and "Ethnicity" in Biomedical Research: How Do Scientists Construct and Explain Differences in Health?

Catherine Lee

Social and biomedical scientists, journal editors, and public health officials continue to debate the merits of the use of race and ethnicity in health-related research. As biomedical research focuses on issues of racial or ethnic health disparities, it remains unclear how biomedical scientists investigate race or ethnicity and health.
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How Much Time Do Patients Spend on Outpatient Visits? The American Time Use Survey

Louise B. Russell, Yoko Ibuka and Deborah Carr

Background: In Crossing the Quality Chasm, the Institute of Medicine recommended that patient-centered care should not waste patients’ time and should recognize the involvement of family and friends.
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Preventing Chronic Disease: An Important Investment, But Don’t Count On Cost Savings

Louise B. Russell

Over the four decades since cost-effectiveness analysis was first applied to health and medicine, hundreds of studies have shown that prevention usually adds to medical costs instead of reducing them.
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Effects of Leisure and Non-Leisure Physical Activity on Mortality in U.S. Adults over Two Decades

Alejandro Arrieta, PhD and Louise Russell, PhD

PURPOSE: To estimate the effects of the components of total physical activity, leisure-time and nonleisure activity, on all-cause mortality over two decades in a large, nationally representative sample of U.S.
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Making Up with Mom: Why Mothers and Daughters Disagree About Kids, Careers, and Casseroles (and What to Do About It)

Julie Halpert and Deborah Carr

Young women today have infinitely more options than their mothers and grandmothers did decades ago. “Should I become a doctor, a writer, or a stay-at-home mom?” “Should I get married or live with my boyfriend?” “Do I want children?” Women in their twenties, thirties, and forties today are wrestling with life-altering decisions about work and family—and they need all the support they can get.

But the very person whose support they crave most—their mother—often can’t get on board, and a rift is created between the two generations, even for women who have always had a strong relationship.

A mother’s simple question, like “How can you trust a nanny to watch your children all day?” can bring her poised, accomplished CEO daughter to tears, or provoke a nasty response more suitable to a surly teenager than a leader of industry.
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Initiation and Change of Psychotropic Medication Regimens among Adolescents in Inpatient Care

Lynn A. Warner, Cynthia A. Fontanella, and Kathleen J. Pottick

Objective: The purpose of this study was to compare clinical and service utilization profiles of adolescents admitted to inpatient treatment with and without a psychotropic medication regimen, and estimate correlates of medication use separately for the two groups.

Method: Comprehensive data on clinical characteristics and service utilization of 517 adolescents enrolled in Medicaid who were admitted to three inpatient hospitals (one for-profit and two nonprofit) in a mid-Atlantic state were used.
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Mental Health and Social Policy

David Mechanic

The fifth edition of Mental Health and Social Policy takes a multidisciplinary approach to mental health and social policy. It covers mental health issues and includes important new epidemiological studies, controlled clinical trials, and other investigations that inform the new thrust for evidence-based mental health services.
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Health-Related Activities in the American Time Use Survey

Louise B. Russell, Yoko Ibuka, and Katharine G. Abraham

The Bureau of Labor Statistics' American Time Use Survey (ATUS), launched in 2003, offers the first comprehensive look at how individuals spend their time. Health services researchers can use it to study time spent on a variety of health-related activities.
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The Loss of Sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow into Depressive Disorder

Allan V. Horwitz and Jerome C. Wakefield

Depression has become the single most commonly treated mental disorder, amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from this disorder every year and 25% succumb at some point in their lives.
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The Dilemma of Federal Mental Health Policy

Gerald N. Grob and Howard H. Goldman

Severe and persistent mental illnesses are among the most pressing health and social problems in contemporary America. Recent estimates suggest that more than three million people in the U.S.
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A Death Retold: Jesica Santillan, the Bungled Transplant, and Paradoxes of Medical Citizenship

Keith Wailoo, Julie Livingston, Peter Guarnaccia, Editors

In February 2003, an undocumented immigrant teen from Mexico lay dying in a prominent American hospital due to a stunning medical oversight—she had received a heart-lung transplantation of the wrong blood type.
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The Truth about Health Care: Why Reform Is Not Working in America

David Mechanic

The United States spends significantly more per person on health care than any other country but the evidence shows that care is often poor and inappropriate. Despite expenditures upwards of 1.9 trillion dollars -- a cost that grows substantially every year --health care services remain fragmented and uncoordinated, and more than 46 million people are uninsured.
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The Troubled Dream of Genetic Medicine: Ethnicity and Innovation in Tay-Sachs, Cystic Fibrosis, and Sickle Cell Disease

Keith Wailoo and
Stephen Pemberton

Why do racial and ethnic controversies become attached, as they often do, to discussions of modern genetics? How do theories about genetic difference become entangled with political debates about cultural and group differences in America? Such issues are a conspicuous part of the histories of three hereditary diseases: Tay-Sachs, commonly identified with Jewish Americans; cystic fibrosis, often labeled a "Caucasian" disease; and sickle cell disease, widely associated with African Americans.

In this captivating account, historians Keith Wailoo and Stephen Pemberton reveal how these diseases—fraught with ethnic and racial meanings for many Americans—became objects of biological fascination and crucibles of social debate.
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Spousal Bereavement in Late Life

Deborah Carr, Randolph Nesse, and Camille Wortman, Editors

This volume provides insightful analysis and theoretical interpretation of factors that contribute to a range of adjustment patterns among bereaved persons in late life. It places the experience of widowhood in late life squarely within the context of contemporary society and explores a remarkable range of associated issues.
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The Chicago Guide to Writing About Multivariate Analysis

Jane E. Miller

Bringing together advanced statistical methods and good expository writing, The Chicago Guide to Writing about Multivariate Analysis offers much-needed help to academic researchers as well as analysts who write for general audiences.
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Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care

David Mechanic, Lynn B. Rogut, David C. Colby, and James R. Knickman, Eds.

Policy Challenges in Modern Health Care is a product of The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Investigator Awards in Health Policy Research, one of the Institute's national programs directed by David Mechanic.
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The Chicago Guide to Writing About Numbers

Jane E. Miller

"People who work with numbers are often stymied by how to write about them. Those who don't often work with numbers have an even tougher time trying to put them into words. For instance, scientists and policy analysts learn to calculate and interpret numbers, but not how to explain them to a general audience.
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Focus on Economic Outcomes in Later Life

Stephen Crystal and Dennis Shea (Volume Editors)

In this latest volume of annual reviews, leading scholars focus on the economics of aging, with a particular emphasis on the economic future of the baby boom generation. Key themes include the influence of early advantages on later-life economic outcomes (the cumulative advantage/cumulative disadvantage hypothesis); the relationship between inequalities in economic status and inequalities in health status and access to health; and the consequences of societal choices concerning retirement income systems and policies for financing acute and long-term health care.
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Effective Health Behavior in Older Adults

K. Warner Schaie, Howard Leventhal, and Sherry L. Willis (Editors)

Based on the edited proceedings of a conference held at Pennsylvania State University in 1999, the chapters are oriented to examining health behaviors and societal mechanisms that facilitate or discourage the assumption of individual responsibility for these behaviors.
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The Self-Regulation of Health and Illness Behaviour

Linda D. Cameron and
Howard Leventhal (Editors)

Over the past two decades self-regulation theory has emerged to offer a whole new perspective on human behaviour. With its focus on the ways in which individuals direct and monitor their activities and emotions to attain their goals, the theory provides a dynamic framework for understanding the complexities of behaviour in response to emotionally provocative events, such as illness and stressful experiences.
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The Deadly Truth

Gerald N. Grob

The Deadly Truth chronicles the complex interactions between disease and the peoples of America from the pre-Columbian world to the present. Gerry Grob's ultimate lesson is stark but valuable: there can be no final victory over disease.
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Creating Mental Illness

Allan V. Horwitz

In this timely and provocative critique of modern psychiatry, Dr. Allan Horwitz's recent book, Creating Mental Illness (University of Chicago Press, 2002) examines current conceptions of mental illness as a disease.
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Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health

Keith A. Wailoo

Dr. Keith Wailoo's most recent book, Dying in the City of the Blues: Sickle Cell Anemia and the Politics of Race and Health (University of North Carolina Press, 2001) expands his first book's analysis of the history of sickle cell anemia in a broad social perspective in the context of Memphis.
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