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      Cause and effect in studies on unemployment, mental health and suicide: a meta-analytic and conceptual review.

      Psychological Medicine
      Adult, Female, Humans, Male, Mental Disorders, epidemiology, psychology, Suicide, statistics & numerical data, Unemployment

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          Abstract

          There are ongoing questions about whether unemployment has causal effects on suicide as this relationship may be confounded by past experiences of mental illness. The present review quantified the effects of adjustment for mental health on the relationship between unemployment and suicide. Findings were used to develop and interpret likely causal models of unemployment, mental health and suicide. A random-effects meta-analysis was conducted on five population-based cohort studies where temporal relationships could be clearly ascertained. Results of the meta-analysis showed that unemployment was associated with a significantly higher relative risk (RR) of suicide before adjustment for prior mental health [RR 1.58, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.33-1.83]. After controlling for mental health, the RR of suicide following unemployment was reduced by approximately 37% (RR 1.15, 95% CI 1.00-1.30). Greater exposure to unemployment was associated with higher RR of suicide, and the pooled RR was higher for males than for females. Plausible interpretations of likely pathways between unemployment and suicide are complex and difficult to validate given the poor delineation of associations over time and analytic rationale for confounder adjustment evident in the revised literature. Future research would be strengthened by explicit articulation of temporal relationships and causal assumptions. This would be complemented by longitudinal study designs suitable to assess potential confounders, mediators and effect modifiers influencing the relationship between unemployment and suicide.

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          Most cited references29

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          Bringing context back into epidemiology: variables and fallacies in multilevel analysis.

          A large portion of current epidemiologic research is based on methodologic individualism: the notion that the distribution of health and disease in populations can be explained exclusively in terms of the characteristics of individuals. The present paper discusses the need to include group- or macro-level variables in epidemiologic studies, thus incorporating multiple levels of determination in the study of health outcomes. These types of analyses, which have been called contextual or multi-level analyses, challenge epidemiologists to develop theoretical models of disease causation that extend across levels and explain how group-level and individual-level variables interact in shaping health and disease. They also raise a series of methodological issues, including the need to select the appropriate contextual unit and contextual variables, to correctly specify the individual-level model, and, in some cases, to account for residual correlation between individuals within contexts. Despite its complexities, multilevel analysis holds potential for reemphasizing the role of macro-level variables in shaping health and disease in populations.
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            Quantifying biases in causal models: classical confounding vs collider-stratification bias.

            It has long been known that stratifying on variables affected by the study exposure can create selection bias. More recently it has been shown that stratifying on a variable that precedes exposure and disease can induce confounding, even if there is no confounding in the unstratified (crude) estimate. This paper examines the relative magnitudes of these biases under some simple causal models in which the stratification variable is graphically depicted as a collider (a variable directly affected by two or more other variables in the graph). The results suggest that bias from stratifying on variables affected by exposure and disease may often be comparable in size with bias from classical confounding (bias from failing to stratify on a common cause of exposure and disease), whereas other biases from collider stratification may tend to be much smaller.
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              A review of the healthy worker effect in occupational epidemiology

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                23834819
                10.1017/S0033291713001621

                Chemistry
                Adult,Female,Humans,Male,Mental Disorders,epidemiology,psychology,Suicide,statistics & numerical data,Unemployment

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