While the contemporaneous association between mental health problems and criminal behavior has been explored in the literature, the long-term consequences of such problems, depression in particular, have received much less attention. Using data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent...

There is suggestive evidence that rates of major depression have risen markedly in the U.S. concurrent with the rise in obesity. The economic burden of depression, about $100 billion annually, is under-estimated if depression has a positive causal impact on obesity. If depression plays a causal...

Cross-cultural research has placed in question the ADD/ADHD syndrome. Drugs for the treatment of ADD/ADHD may predispose children for depression and suicide. Dietary and behavioral research places new emphasis on cultural aspects of the etiology of high activity children. MRI studies of...

This paper employs a conditional quantile regression approach to examine the roles of family SES, early childhood life-events, unobserved heterogeneity and pure state dependence in explaining the distribution of depression among adolescents and young adults using data on the children of the US...

Past research has provided evidence of the role of some personal characteristics as risk factors for depression. However, few studies have examined jointly their specific impact and whether country characteristics change the probability of being depressed. In general, this is due to the use of...

Exploiting the discontinuity in advertising along the borders of television markets, I estimate that television advertising of prescription antidepressants exhibits significant positive spillovers on rivals' demand. I apply this identification in a demand model, where estimated parameters...

This paper studies the relationship between early mental health episodes and early homelessness, focusing on depression and anxiety amongst disadvantaged Australians. Using data from the Australian Journeys Home survey, we investigate whether the early onset of mental health conditions make a...

The mental health of the elderly in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) is a largely neglected subject, both by policy and research. We combine data from the health and retirement family of surveys in seven LMICs (plus the US) to document that depressive symptoms among those aged 55 and...