For Boys, Moving to a Wealthier Neighborhood Is as Traumatic as Going to War

[mota bhai 2,675]

It’s well known that living in high-poverty neighborhoods has a significant effect on the mental health of children. Now a new study in the Journal of the American Medical Association offers a nuanced look at what happens after children leave these environments. It highlights a paradox: According to the study authors, led by Harvard professor Ronald Kessler, boys who move into more affluent neighborhoods report higher rates of depression and conduct disorder than their female peers.

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Kessler points to various factors—community perception, interpersonal skills—as major points of influence: “We had an anthropologist working with us, and the anthropologist went and talked to and watched the kids in the old neighborhoods and the new neighborhoods, and their perception was that when the boys came into the new neighborhood they were coded as these juvenile delinquents,” says Kessler. “Whereas with the girls, it was exactly the opposite. They were embraced by the community—‘you poor little disadvantaged thing, let me help you.’”

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In follow-up interviews conducted 10 to 15 years later, boys reported higher proportions of major depression, posttraumatic stress disorder, and conduct disorder than boys within the control group—rates of PTSD comparable to those of combat soldiers. The opposite occurred with girls, who reported mental health that was substantially better than the girls who stayed in high-poverty neighborhoods.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/116886/boys-report-ptsd-when-they-move-richer-neighborhoods

[TBoneTX 45,542]

After skimming the actual study, I see a couple of flaws that make me dubious of the results. Chief among these is that no mental-health evaluations were done at baseline. The authors themselves admit that no policy implications can be drawn from their results. Looks like some people needed to "publish or perish." I'm surprised that JAMA would publish something like this.

Edited March 7, 2014 by TBoneTX