Chest
Original ResearchAsthmaThe Asthma/Mental Health Nexus in a Population-Based Sample of the United States
Section snippets
Materials and Methods
The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) is a health-monitoring survey of noninstitutionalized adults administered by telephone at the state level. It is conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and since 1994 has been administered annually in all 50 states, Washington, DC; Puerto Rico; the US Virgin Islands; and Guam. Results are weighted accordingly to yield a nationally representative sample of the US population. This study uses data from the 2006 BRFSS
Results
Table 1 presents the results of the bivariate analysis between number of days of poor mental health and the included demographic variables and the final model covariates. Respondents in the oldest age group (> 65 years) consistently were the smallest proportion of respondents in all categories of poor mental health. Women reported significantly worse mental health across all categories. Divorced, separated, and never-married individuals were disproportionately more represented in the poorest
Discussion
There are two major findings of this study. The first is that respondents with any degree of mental health impairment, even those who reported < 14 days of poor mental health, were at increased risk of reporting current asthma. Those reporting ≤ 1 week of poor mental health had an RRR of 1.38 for having asthma, while those reporting 1 to 2 weeks of poor mental health had an RRR of 1.49. The second major finding is that the nexus between mental health impairment and current asthma appears to
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The authors have no conflicts of interest to disclose.
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