Home Is Where You Hang Your Hat: Host Town Identity, But Not Hometown Identity, Protects Against Mental Health Symptoms Associated with Financial Stress

Debt and financial insecurity are associated with stress, low self-worth, and poor health. Joining and identifying with social groups (social identification) promotes better health and higher self-esteem. Here, we examined whether identifying with one's local neighborhood protected people from developing mental health symptoms associated with financial stress. We analyzed data from a general population survey (Study 1, N = 4319) and a student mental health survey (Study 2, N = 612) conducted in the North West of England. We administered measures of financial stress, self-esteem, neighborhood identity, and mental health, and conducted moderated mediation analyses to test our predictions. Study 1 (population survey) demonstrated that stronger identification with one's local neighborhood attenuated the adverse effects of financial stress on self-esteem and subsequent mental health. Study 2 (student survey) showed that strong host town identities buffered students from mental health symptoms related to financial stress. Strong hometown identities, however, showed no buffering effect. The findings suggest that one way financial stress impacts mental health is by eroding self-esteem. Identifying with one's current place of residence appears to disrupt this pathway, while identifying with one's previous place of residence does not provide the same psychological protection. Read More: https://guilfordjournals.com/doi/10.1521/jscp.2018.37.3.15

Nck adapter proteins: functional versatility in T cells

Nck is a ubiquitously expressed adapter protein that is almost exclusively built of one SH2 domain and three SH3 domains. The two isoproteins of Nck are functionally redundant in many aspects and differ in only few amino acids that are mostly located in the linker regions between the interaction modules. Nck proteins connect receptor and non-receptor tyrosine kinases to the machinery of actin reorganisation. Thereby, Nck regulates activation-dependent processes during cell polarisation and migration and plays a crucial role in the signal transduction of a variety of receptors including for instance PDGF-, HGF-, VEGF- and Ephrin receptors. In most cases, the SH2 domain mediates binding to the phosphorylated receptor or associated phosphoproteins, while SH3 domain interactions lead to the formation of larger protein complexes. In T lymphocytes, Nck plays a pivotal role in the T cell receptor (TCR)-induced reorganisation of the actin cytoskeleton and the formation of the immunological synapse. However, in this context, two different mechanisms and adapter complexes are discussed. In the first scenario, dependent on an activation-induced conformational change in the CD3ε subunits, a direct binding of Nck to components of the TCR/CD3 complex was shown. In the second scenario, Nck is recruited to the TCR complex via phosphorylated Slp76, another central constituent of the membrane proximal activation complex. Over the past years, a large number of putative Nck interactors have been identified in different cellular systems that point to diverse additional functions of the adapter protein, e.g. in the control of gene expression and proliferation