
Relationship between Education and Mental Health: New Evidence from Twin Study - randomname2
http://sf.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2016/05/20/sf.sow035.abstract
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jostmey
The study argues that the positive relationship between mental health and
higher levels of education is due to confounding factors. The take home
message seems to be that higher levels education is not important to mental
health.

I think the larger narrative here is that higher education is not as important
to success as previously believed. Was someone successful because they went to
college, or were they already on a trajectory for success, and they just
happened to attend college because they were offered a free ride?

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ausjke
It's all statistics, I would think the highly educated has a higher
probability to be more successful then the less educated when a large sample
pool is used?

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GalacticDomin8r
It's turtles all the way down.

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atdt
Full text on SciHub: [http://sci-hub.cc/10.1093/sf/sow035](http://sci-
hub.cc/10.1093/sf/sow035) (PDF)

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Kronopath
So in short, by comparing identical twins, this study found that people with
better mental health tended to achieve a higher education, meaning that the
arrow of causality doesn't go the other way: education doesn't necessarily
improve mental health.

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bolster
TL:DR "If there are social factors that systematically drive differences in
mental health within pairs of MZ twins, our findings suggest that education is
not among them."

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porFavor
If every article on HN had a TL:DR, I'd be a happy camper.

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cairo_x
"confounding factors. "

I'm going to go ahead and state the obvious. School systems (all social
systems) filter for (relatively) functionally stable individuals. This is the
case with the work-force too, and easily explains the correlation between the
unemployed and the mentally ill. One does not cause the other, one filters out
the other.

I guess it's easy to ignore this dark possibility; it would imply deep, and
possibly irreparable facts of human nature.

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ap22213
I wonder if this a relatively new phenomenon, or if it has always been the
case.

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foobarbecue
Nice to see this linked to the original article rather than to a pop article
misrepresenting it.

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redxblood
I don't see the surprise however.

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exit
it's spelt out in the abstract, no?

 _> Prior research has documented a strong and positive correlation between
completed education and adults’ mental health.

...

> Results from our analyses suggest that the observed association between
> education and mental health is attributable to confounding on unobserved
> variables._

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jlg23
The title is misleading, though the original is not descriptive. Suggestion:
"Higher education does not improve mental health, twin-study proves"

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robbiep
It's a journal article title, not linkbait. Most scientific articles don't
give away the ending, they're just a statement of what is. The idea presumably
being, you must read at least the abstract

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kome
sociology was right.

