The effects of gastrointestinal disturbances on the onset of depression and anxiety.

BACKGROUND: Stomach pain is an ailment that occurs frequently in the general population. It is not unusual if such stomach issues produce some amount of stress in an individual, but it can be worrying if these pains lead to significant mental health problems. The relationship between some abdominal pain, such as bowel syndrome, and depression or anxiety has been gaining much interest. However, previous studies that have empirically investigated this relationship are scarce. METHODS: To analyze the impact of having gastrointestinal problems, among other socioeconomic conditions, on the onset of depression and anxiety in the Spanish population, we compare treating gastrointestinal diseases as exogenous in a single-equation probit model with a bivariate probit model in which this variable is treated as endogenous. A likelihood-ratio test of the correlation coefficient of the disturbances suggests that gastrointestinal problems are endogenous. Thus, the approach taken herein allows the direct testing of the hypothesis that having gastrointestinal problems and the onset of mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety are jointly determined by certain socioeconomic factors. A cross-sectional analytical study was analyzed using data from a 2017 survey of health indicators and life conditions that was developed by the Statistics Spanish Office. RESULTS: The probability of having depression or anxiety increases with age, stress, daily limitations and gastrointestinal disorders. On the other hand, the probability is lower for men, married people and those who engage in exercise several times per week. Our findings estimate that having gastrointestinal problems increases the probability of having depression in 7% and the probability of anxiety in 8.8% of the sample. CONCLUSIONS: Our empirical results suggest that not considering the endogeneity of gastrointestinal problems could result in an overestimate of the impact of this factor on the development of depression or anxiety.

The impact of disability on motherhood decisions: New evidence from Spain.

There exists a high proportion of women with disabilities who decide to be mothers although there is a high stigma about their capabilities. The objective is to analyze the impact of disability, among other socioeconomic conditions, on the motherhood decisions. We compared the results of treating disability as exogenous with a bivariate probit model. A cross-sectional analytical study has been analyzed by using data from the Fecundity Survey of 2018. The model estimates the probability of having children having disability, which is a 3.5%. Moreover, motherhood propensity for disabled women is 0.4 percentage points lower than for non-disabled.In this article the authors undertook a significant literature review, then it is included a development of the theoretical and methodology framework for analyzing the effect of disability on the attitudes of women toward the decision of having children. In this context, many disabled women have successfully become mothers but the existent barriers have unmotivated others. The difficulty is basically due to the stigma about their mothering capabilities or associated with physical conditions such as risk of abortion or even a worsening of health. The economic framework under our specification is an extension of the Households Health Production Model where women derive utility from having children and they use their skills, knowledge or time to achieve their objective. In this case, to have children is the outcome and education, health status and other socioeconomic factors are the inputs. Having children is only one of the sources of utility that a woman has, they also derive utility from labor time, consumption or healthcare, among others. Despite several studies used this methodology to analyze motherhood decisions in many Countries in the world, the impact of disability is much less explored.