This application requests five years funding for a K01 Mentored Scientist Development Award for New Minority Faculty (PAR-99-169). This application intends to examine the longitudinal relationships that link SES to depression through stress, emotional support, negative social interactions, and mastery among African American and white adults. The proposed research aims to increase our understanding of the social support process and how it influences mental health outcomes among African Americans and whites. While negative social interactions can exacerbate the effects of stress and increase one's risk for depression, the long term mechanisms whereby social relationships affect mental health remains unclear. Moreover, the part that SES plays in these relationships is unknown. The research component of this application outlines a plan for exploring new and innovative questions around the role of SES, social relationships and mastery in the stress process, and the mechanisms whereby these factors impact depression among African Americans and whites. The Americans' Changing Lives Panel Study (Principal Investigator: James S. House) will be used to investigate these relationships over time. The goal of this application is to identify modifiable social and personal resources that can be used to develop, rigorously test and widely disseminate preventive interventions to reduce the effects of stress on mental health outcomes. A five-year program of mentored research, education and training will provide the candidate with the substantive knowledge and methodological skills needed to conduct state-of-the-art research in stress, social relations and mental health. Dr. David T. Takeuchi of the University of Washington will serve as a mentor and will collaborate with an extraordinary group of investigators and scholars who will provide training and consultation in longitudinal design, advanced statistical analysis, questionnaire design and measurement development.
