Alegria, Green, McLaughlin and Loder (2015) provide a most informative review of four key
factors shaping disparities in mental health outcomes among children and adolescents, focusing
on the role of socio-economic status, childhood adversities, family structure and neighbourhood
factors. The paper concludes with recommendations for a future research agenda, and a plea for a
multilevel intervention model addressing the intersection of various forms of inequality,
attacking inequity as a whole instead of focusing only on single mechanisms. Their argument
confirms the call for broad scope preventative actions by the World Health Organization based
on findings from the 2009/2010 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) Study
comprising many European countries (WHO, 2010). Yet, in Europe the discussion of social
inequality in health is less focused on ethnicity and minority status but on socio-economic
position (Braveman, 2012). It is however recognised that attributing all ethnic differences in
health to socioeconomic factors is not satisfactory, that for some health outcomes socioeconomic
gradients vary between ethnic groups, and not adequately accounting for socioeconomic
circumstances when examining ethnic group differences in health can reify ethnicity
and its supposed correlates (Bartley, 2004; Davey Smith, 2000)
