The long term goal of this research is to increase an understanding of the role of adversity in the causation of the main types of psychiatric disorders that are inversely related to socio-economic status (SES) -- schizophrenia, major depression, anti-social personality, substance abuse, and nonspecific distress or """"""""demoralization."""""""" Specifically, the project investigates the social, psychological, and family history factors that may be important in the etiology of these psychopathologies and tests the social stress/social selection issue posed by SES differences. Israel was chosen as the research setting for three main reasons: 1) the strategy required an urban society in which the assimilation of one or more initially disadvantaged ethnic groups is taking place; 2) Israelis have been exposed to unusual as well as usual stressful circumstances during the country's history of war; and 3) the existence in Israel of a well-kept population register facilitated the sampling of a birth cohort. Since 1982, this research has focused on a nationwide cohort of young adult, Israeli-born Jews from relatively disadvantaged North African and relatively advantaged European backgrounds. Screening and diagnostic interviews have been conducted with a full probability sample of 4914 persons. Subsamples of 361 persons diagnosed as having the key types of psychiatric disorders and 198 persons diagnosed as having no disorders have been selected from the larger sample and followed-up with intensive interviews about possible risk factors. Screening interviews have been conducted with at least one sibling of most of these psychiatric cases and controls. The main analyses of the data from the 4914 member epidemiological sample have been completed and reported. The purposes of this competing continuation application are to complete processing and statistical analyses of the detailed data on the 361 cases and 198 controls, including the data from their siblings. Taken together with the completed analyses of the epidemiological data, the proposed analyses of the case/control data would provide a systematic test of the stress-selection issue and a major contribution to an understanding of the role of adversity.
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