Social contagion of mental health: evidence from college roommates.

From a policy standpoint, the spread of health conditions in social networks is important to quantify, because it implies externalities and possible market failures in the consumption of health interventions. Recent studies conclude that happiness and depression may be highly contagious across social ties. The results may be biased, however, because of selection and common shocks. We provide unbiased estimates by using exogenous variation from college roommate assignments. Our findings are consistent with no significant overall contagion of mental health and no more than small contagion effects for specific mental health measures, with no evidence for happiness contagion and modest evidence for anxiety and depression contagion. The weakness of the contagion effects cannot be explained by avoidance of roommates with poor mental health or by generally low social contact among roommates. We also find that similarity of baseline mental health predicts the closeness of roommate relationships, which highlights the potential for selection biases in studies of peer effects that do not have a clearly exogenous source of variation. Overall, our results suggest that mental health contagion is lower, or at least more context specific, than implied by the recent studies in the medical literature.

Associations between connections to parents and friends and non-suicidal self-injury among adolescents: The mediating role of developmental assets.

BACKGROUND: We tested a model that incorporated potential developmental assets through which connections to parents and friends reduce the likelihood of engaging in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) among adolescents. METHOD: Data came from the 2016 Minnesota Student Survey, a population-based survey of 8th, 9th, and 11th grade students (N = 119,452). Chi-square test, t-test, and correlations evaluated bivariate relationships between all variables. Indirect effects of three developmental assets (social competency, positive identity, and empowerment) were modeled simultaneously on associations between connections to parents and friends, and past-year NSSI. RESULTS: Bivariate analyses demonstrated protective effects of parent and friend connections on NSSI and that all developmental assets were negatively associated with NSSI. After accounting for demographic variables and associations between developmental assets in a multiple mediator path model, connections to parents showed a stronger, negative direct relationship with NSSI than did connections to friends. Developmental assets, especially positive identity and empowerment, accounted for a greater proportion of the effect of connections to friends on NSSI than the effect of connections to parents. Finally, social competency was no longer significantly related to NSSI in the multiple mediator path model. CONCLUSION: Clinical efforts to prevent NSSI should focus on enhancing adolescents' sense of positive identity and empowerment, as well as connections to parents and prosocial friends.

The virtual cutting edge: the internet and adolescent self-injury.

The 2 studies reported here use observational data from message boards to investigate how adolescents solicit and share information related to self-injurious behavior. Study 1 examines the prevalence and nature of these message boards, their users, and most commonly discussed topics. Study 2 was intended to explore the correlations between content areas raised for discussion. Both studies were intended to shed light on the role of message boards in spreading information about self-injurious practices and influencing help-seeking behavior. More than 400 self-injury message boards were identified. Most are populated by females who describe themselves as between 12 and 20 years of age. Findings show that online interactions clearly provide essential social support for otherwise isolated adolescents, but they may also normalize and encourage self-injurious behavior and add potentially lethal behaviors to the repertoire of established adolescent self-injurers and those exploring identity options.

Nonsuicidal Self-Injury and Suicidal Self-Injury: A Taxometric Investigation.

The present research examined the latent structure of self-injurious behavior (SIB) to determine whether suicidal self-injury (SSI) and nonsuicidal self-injury (NSSI) reflect categorically distinct types of SIB or dimensional variations of the same construct. Participants consisted of 1,525 female undergraduates across several universities in the United States who completed the Survey of College Mental Health and Well Being and endorsed a history of SIB. Empirically derived indicators representing intent to die, suicidal history, frequency of SIB, severity of SIB, and number of methods of SIB were submitted to three mathematically independent taxometric procedures. Results of multiple consistency tests converged to indicate that the latent structure of SIB is continuous, with individuals who engage in SSI and NSSI differing in degree rather than kind. The implications of these dimensional findings for the theoretical conceptualization, assessment, and treatment of SIB are discussed.

Research with adolescents who engage in non-suicidal self-injury: ethical considerations and challenges.

Non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI) has emerged as a significant psychiatric issue among youth. In addition to its high prevalence rates, NSSI is associated with a number of psychiatric issues and confers risk for varying degrees of physical injury. It is also a risk factor for attempted suicide. Thus, youth who engage in NSSI represent a vulnerable and high-risk population and researchers are likely to encounter a variety of ethical challenges when conducting NSSI research. Accordingly, it is critical that researchers be familiar with the major ethical issues involved in NSSI research and how to effectively account for and address them. This is important both prior to obtaining clearance from their Institutional Review Boards and when carrying out their research. To date, there is no consolidated resource to delineate the ethical challenges inherent to NSSI research and how these can be effectively navigated throughout the research process. The goals of this paper are to review international best practices in NSSI research across the various contexts within which it is studied, to offer guidelines for managing these issues, to identify areas in which variation in approaches prohibits decisive recommendations, and to generate questions in need of further consideration among scholars in this field.

Peer effects on risky behaviors: new evidence from college roommate assignments.

Social scientists continue to devote considerable attention to spillover effects for risky behaviors because of the important policy implications and the persistent challenges in identifying unbiased causal effects. We use the natural experiment of assigned college roommates to estimate peer effects for several measures of health risks: binge drinking, smoking, illicit drug use, gambling, having multiple sex partners, suicidal ideation, and non-suicidal self-injury. We find significant peer effects for binge drinking but little evidence of effects for other outcomes, although there is tentative evidence that peer effects for smoking may be positive among men and negative among women. In contrast to prior research, the peer effects for binge drinking are significant for all subgroups defined by sex and prior drinking status. We also find that pre-existing risky behaviors predict the closeness of friendships, which underscores the significance of addressing selection biases in studies of peer effects.