Modeling of the Temporal Patterns of Fluoxetine Prescriptions and Suicide Rates in the United States

BACKGROUND: To study the potential association of antidepressant use and suicide at a population level, we analyzed the associations between suicide rates and dispensing of the prototypic SSRI antidepressant fluoxetine in the United States during the period 1960–2002. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Sources of data included Centers of Disease Control and US Census Bureau age-adjusted suicide rates since 1960 and numbers of fluoxetine sales in the US, since its introduction in 1988. We conducted statistical analysis of age-adjusted population data and prescription numbers. Suicide rates fluctuated between 12.2 and 13.7 per 100,000 for the entire population from the early 1960s until 1988. Since then, suicide rates have gradually declined, with the lowest value of 10.4 per 100,000 in 2000. This steady decline is significantly associated with increased numbers of fluoxetine prescriptions dispensed from 2,469,000 in 1988 to 33,320,000 in 2002 (r(s) = −0.92; p < 0.001). Mathematical modeling of what suicide rates would have been during the 1988–2002 period based on pre-1988 data indicates that since the introduction of fluoxetine in 1988 through 2002 there has been a cumulative decrease in expected suicide mortality of 33,600 individuals (posterior median, 95% Bayesian credible interval 22,400–45,000). CONCLUSIONS: The introduction of SSRIs in 1988 has been temporally associated with a substantial reduction in the number of suicides. This effect may have been more apparent in the female population, whom we postulate might have particularly benefited from SSRI treatment. While these types of data cannot lead to conclusions on causality, we suggest here that in the context of untreated depression being the major cause of suicide, antidepressant treatment could have had a contributory role in the reduction of suicide rates in the period 1988–2002

The role of academic mentors for Latino/a adolescents exposed to community violence

AimsWe examined the protective role of academic mentors for Latino/a youth exposed to community violence. We tested whether the mentor facilitation of positive growth and mentor school involvement moderated the relations between exposure to violence and Latino/a youth’s educational values, school effort, and academic efficacy.MethodsWe used hierarchical linear regressions to examine these relations among 210 Latino/a high school students.ResultsWitnessing violence and personal victimization was negatively related to all three educational outcomes. Mentor school involvement was positively related to all three educational outcomes, whereas mentor facilitation of growth was positively related to educational values only. A significant interaction between witnessing violence and mentor school involvement indicated that the negative relation between witnessing violence and educational values weakened at high levels of mentor school involvement.ConclusionWe discuss the benefits of academic mentoring and exploring effective mentoring characteristics with Latino/a youth exposed to violence.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150558/1/jcop22189_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/150558/2/jcop22189.pd

The Economic Resource Receipt of New Mothers

U.S. federal policies do not provide a universal social safety net of economic support for women during pregnancy or the immediate postpartum period but assume that employment and/or marriage will protect families from poverty. Yet even mothers with considerable human and marital capital may experience disruptions in employment, earnings, and family socioeconomic status postbirth. We use the National Survey of Families and Households to examine the economic resources that mothers with children ages 2 and younger receive postbirth, including employment, spouses, extended family and social network support, and public assistance. Results show that many new mothers receive resources postbirth. Marriage or postbirth employment does not protect new mothers and their families from poverty, but education, race, and the receipt of economic supports from social networks do

The Concentration of Affluence in the United States, 1990

The author examines the concentration of affluent households in affluent neighborhoods in U.S. metropolitan areas in 1990. The rate of concentrated affluence, the percentage of affluent households living in affluent neighborhoods, is considered for the total population and separately for blacks and whites. Also, differences in the rate of concentrated affluence between blacks and whites are explored. Models of concentrated affluence that incorporate variables suggested by the literature on economic restructuring in the late twentieth century and by the literature on racial differences in the residential return to individual resources are developed and tested. In general, variables measuring industry/occupation employment mix influence the rate of concentrated affluence mainly through the levels of income they generate. Racial differences in the rate of concentrated affluence are influenced more by income differences between blacks and whites than by residential segregation.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

A growing disconnection from nature is evident in cultural products

Human connection with nature is widely believed to be in decline, even though empirical evidence on the magnitude and temporal pattern of the change is scarce. Studying works of popular culture in English throughout the 20th century and later, we document a cultural shift away from nature, beginning in the 1950s. Since then, references to nature have been decreasing steadily in fiction, song lyrics, and film storylines. No parallel decline is observed in references to the human-made environment. These findings are cause for concern, not only because they imply foregone benefits from engagement with nature, but also because cultural products are agents of socialization that can evoke curiosity, respect, and concern for the natural world

Single parenting: Interventions in the transitional stage

Following divorce or separation, many mother-headed families need to mourn losses, including reduced economic resources. They need to reestablish family rituals, confront such issues as time management and structural changes that can result in scapegoating or over-reliance on a parental child. Normalizing difficulties associated with parenting is important because single parents tend to internalize societal attribution of family difficulties to inadequate family structure rather than developmental stages, limited economic resources, and negative expectations about the capacity of women to head families.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/44289/1/10591_2004_Article_BF00891869.pd

Prototyping Self in Silicon Valley, Deep Diversity as a Framework for Anthropological Inquiry

High-technology work fuels a dynamic global exchange from technopoles throughout the world, but especially between East and South Asia and the northern Californian region of Silicon Valley. This migration drives an expanded number of ancestral identities. Professional and activity-based identities flourish as Silicon Valley’s strong narrative of meritocracy loosens the grip of birth ascription on the creation of identities. These achieved identities proliferate as people experiment on their own sense of self. Traditional conceptual tools related to immigration, and even such contemporary approaches as Appadurai’s ethnoscapes, do not adequately illuminate the ethnographic data on Silicon Valley workers, families, and especially youth. The concept of deep diversity, first posed by philosopher Charles Taylor and reified by anthropologist Clifford Geertz, reinterprets the interactions of traditional ethnic identity categories, providing a powerful framework with which to think

Application of Data Mining in Air Traffic Forecasting

The main goal of the study centers on developing a model for the purpose of air traffic forecasting by using off-the-shelf data mining and machine learning techniques. Although data driven modeling has been extensively applied in the aviation sector, little research has been done in the area of air traffic forecasting. This study is inspired by previous research focused on improving the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) Terminal Area Forecasting (TAF) methodology, which historically assumed that the US air transportation system (ATS) network structure was static. Recent developments use data mining algorithms to predict the likelihood of previously un-connected airport-pairs being connected in the future, and the likelihood of connected airport-pairs becoming un-connected. Despite the innovation of this research, it does not focus on improving the FAA’s existing methodology for forecasting future air traffic levels on existing routes, which is based on relatively simple regression and growth models. We investigate different approaches for improving and developing new features within the existing data mining applications in air traffic forecasting. We focus particularly on predicting detailed traffic information for the US ATS. Initially, a 2-stage log-log model is applied to establish the significance of different inputs and to identify issues of endogeneity and multi-colinearity, while maintaining the simplicity of current models. Although the model shows high goodness of fit, it tested positive for both mentioned issues as well as presenting problems with causality. With the objective of solving these issues, a 3-stage model that is under development is introduced. This model employs logistic regression and discrete choice modelling. As part of future work, machine learning techniques such as clustering and neural networks will be applied to improve this model’s performance

The limits of social class in explaining ethnic gaps in educational attainment

This paper reports an analysis of the educational attainment and progress between age 11 and age 14 of over 14,500 students from the nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Young People in England (LSYPE). The mean attainment gap in national tests at age 14 between White British and several ethnic minority groups were large, more than three times the size of the gender gap, but at the same time only about one-third of the size of the social class gap. Socio-economic variables could account for the attainment gaps for Black African, Pakistani and Bangladeshi students, but not for Black Caribbean students. Further controls for parental and student attitudes, expectations and behaviours indicated minority ethnic groups were on average more advantaged on these measures than White British students, but this was not reflected proportionately in their levels of attainment. Black Caribbean students were distinctive as the only group making less progress than White British students between age 11 and 14 and this could not be accounted for by any of the measured contextual variables. Possible explanations for the White British-Black Caribbean gap are considered