Faculty of Health, The University of Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
Faculty of Health, The University of Canberra, ACT, 2601, Australia.
Soc Sci Med. 2015 Mar;128:246-54. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2015.01.022. Epub 2015 Jan 15.
The links between social capital and mental wellbeing are established but the direction of the social capital-wellbeing relationship is rarely systematically examined. This omission undermines the validity of social capital as a basis for health interventions. The aim of this paper was to explore the short-term (one-year) reciprocal relationship between community participation - an important component of social capital - and mental wellbeing. We used nationally representative Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey data, 2005-11. The HILDA Survey is an annual cohort study from which was extracted a sub-sample of panel data (the same people participating across multiple waves) enabling us to use fixed effects regression methods to model the longitudinal association of mental health and participation controlling for individual heterogeneity. The results showed that better mental wellbeing in one year was generally related to more community participation the next year, while greater past community participation was linked to better mental wellbeing the next year independent of (i) initial mental wellbeing, (ii) multiple potentially confounding factors and (iii) unobserved and time-constant heterogeneity. Political participation was marginally related to worse mental health in both directions. The results also showed that the association between community participation and mental wellbeing the next year is weaker for those with poor initial wellbeing than for initially healthier respondents. Our findings may inform the trial and scientific evaluation of programs aimed at increasing informal social connectedness and civic engagement to promote mental wellbeing.
社会资本与心理健康之间存在关联，但社会资本与健康之间的关系方向很少被系统地检验。这种遗漏损害了社会资本作为健康干预基础的有效性。本文旨在探讨社区参与（社会资本的一个重要组成部分）与心理健康之间的短期（一年）相互关系。我们使用了具有全国代表性的澳大利亚家庭、收入和劳动力动态调查（HILDA）数据，时间范围为 2005 年至 2011 年。HILDA 调查是一项年度队列研究，从中提取了面板数据的子样本（相同的人参与了多个波次），使我们能够使用固定效应回归方法，在控制个体异质性的情况下，对心理健康和参与之间的纵向关联进行建模。结果表明，一年中更好的心理健康状况通常与下一年更多的社区参与有关，而过去更多的社区参与与下一年更好的心理健康状况有关，而与（i）初始心理健康状况、（ii）多个潜在混杂因素和（iii）未观察到的和时不变的异质性无关。政治参与在两个方向上都与较差的心理健康状况有一定的关系。研究结果还表明，对于初始健康状况较差的人来说，社区参与与下一年心理健康之间的关联比初始健康状况较好的人要弱。我们的发现可能为旨在增加非正式社会联系和公民参与以促进心理健康的项目的试验和科学评估提供信息。
