by the University of Michigan
ANN ARBOR, Mich.—When people are under chronic stress, they tend to smoke, drink, use drugs, and overeat to help cope with stress. These behaviors trigger a biological cascade that helps prevent depression, but they also contribute to a host of physical problems that eventually contribute to early death.
That is the claim of University of Michigan social scientist James S. Jackson and colleagues in an article published in the May 2010 issue of the American Journal of Public Health. The theory helps explain a long-time epidemiological puzzle: why Blacks have worse physical health than whites but better psychiatric health.
“People engage in bad habits for functional reasons, not because of weak character or ignorance,” says Jackson, director of the U-M Institute for Social Research (ISR).
“Over the life course, coping strategies that are effective in ‘preserving’ the mental health of Blacks may work in concert with social, economic, and environmental inequalities to produce physical health disparities in middle age and later life.”
In an analysis of survey data, obtained from the same people at two points in time, Jackson and colleagues find evidence for their theory. The relationship between stressful life events and depression varies by the level of unhealthy behaviors. But the direction of that relationship is strikingly different for Blacks and whites.
Controlling for the extent of stressful life events a person has experienced, unhealthy behaviors seemed to protect against depression in Blacks but lead to higher levels of depression in whites.
“Many Black Americans live in chronically precarious and difficult environments,” says Jackson. “These environments produce stressful living conditions, and often the most easily accessible options for addressing stress are various unhealthy behaviors. These behaviors may alleviate stress through the same mechanisms that are believed to contribute to some mental disorders the hypothalamic-pitu-itary-adrenalcortical (HPA) axis and related biological systems.”
Since negative health behaviors such as smoking, drinking alcohol, drug use, and overeating (especially comfort foods) also have direct and debilitating effects on physical health, these behaviors – along with the difficult living conditions that give rise to them – contribute to the disparities in mortality and physical health problems
