Mental Illness and Poverty: Does One Cause the Other?

It has been a chicken-and-egg question for decades: Does the misery of poverty breed mental illness, or does the burden of mental illness cast people down into poverty? The two clearly tend to go together, but which causes which?

This week, a Massachusetts researcher published possibly the broadest study yet on the question, examining tens of thousands of hospital records statewide to see whether patients who were hospitalized for mental illness then “drifted down” to less affluent ZIP codes.

The study, which followed patients from 1994 through 2000, turned up surprisingly little such downward drift, said the researcher, Christopher G. Hudson, a professor at Salem State College and expert in mental health policy.

So, he said, “the news here is that there is now increasingly strong evidence that socioeconomic status is indeed a very important dimension of mental illness, though obviously not the only dimension.”

Dr. John Grohol is the CEO and founder of Psych Central. He is an author, researcher and expert in mental health online, and has been writing about online behavior, mental health and psychology issues -- as well as the intersection of technology and human behavior -- since 1992. Dr. Grohol sits on the editorial board of the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking and is a founding board member and treasurer of the Society for Participatory Medicine.

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    Last reviewed: By John M. Grohol, Psy.D. on 11 Mar 2005
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