Throughout the world, young men account for a disproportion of suicide, substance abuse, violence, and accidents, and Egypt is no exception. Psychiatric and social science research indicates that men in Egypt are under tremendous psychological stress, due largely to rapid social change and limited economic opportunities, a situation found across the developing world. At 17-18 years, Egyptian men on the educational track face a nationwide university entrance exam. Performance on this exam heavily partitions future opportunities, at a time when young men are motivated to join the adult world, but are hindered by limited life prospects and an unpredictable social world. Given these stresses in psychosocial development, this study will examine how Egyptian men who either pass or fail university entrance exams reach individual psychosocial outcomes. I will examine how social behavior and social context, cognitive schemas and subjective experience of the social world, HPA and autonomic reactivity, and the physical effects of long-term stress relate to psychiatric morbidity over this one-year period. 120 men will complete a 70-minute protocol every four months, which includes psychiatric inventories and an Epstein-Barr virus antibody test (measure of chronic stress) as outcome variables, and cortisol/skin conductance as major physiological predictor variables. Subjective experience of social stressors (interview assessment) will provide the major psychosocial predictor variable. Longitudinal data analysis will allow synchronic and diachronic examinations of risk factors and psychiatric outcomes.
