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The present study used quantitative and qualitative methods to explore how lonely young people are seen from others' perspectives, in terms of their personality, behavior, and life circumstances. Data were drawn from the Environmental Risk Longitudinal Twin Study, a cohort of 2,232 individuals born in the U.K. in the mid-1990s. When participants were aged 18, they provided self-reports of loneliness, and informant ratings of loneliness were provided by interviewers, as well as participants' parents and siblings. Interviewers further provided Big Five personality ratings and detailed written notes in which they documented their perceptions of the participants and their reflections on the content of the interview. In the quantitative section of the article, regression analyses were used to examine the perceptibility of loneliness and how participants' loneliness related to their perceived personality traits. The informant ratings of participants' loneliness showed good agreement with self-reports. Furthermore, loneliness was associated with lower perceived conscientiousness, agreeableness, and extroversion and higher perceived neuroticism. Within-twin pair analyses indicated that these associations were partly explained by common underlying genetic influences. In the qualitative section of the study, the loneliest 5% of study participants (N = 108) were selected, and thematic analysis was applied to the study interviewers' notes about those participants. Three themes were identified and named: "uncomfortable in own skin," "clustering of risk," and "difficulties accessing social resources." These results add depth to the current conceptualization of loneliness and emphasize the complexity and intersectional nature of the circumstances severely lonely young adults live in.

Background: Hypertension has been linked to socially patterned stressors, including discrimination. Few studies have quantified the risk of hypertension associated with exposure to perceived job discrimination. Methods: We used prospective cohort data from the Sister Study (enrollment from 2003–2009) to estimate self‐reported incident hypertension associated with perceived job discrimination based on race, gender, age, sexual orientation, or health status. Job discrimination in the prior 5 years was assessed in 2008–2012, and incident doctor‐diagnosed hypertension was ascertained in previously hypertension‐free participants. Results: Among the 16,770 eligible participants aged 37–78 years at the start of follow‐up, 10.5% reported job discrimination in the past 5 years, and 19.2% (n = 3226) reported incident hypertension during a median follow‐up of 9.7 years (interquartile range 8.2–11.0 years). Self‐reported poor health or inclusion in minoritized groups based on race/ethnicity or sexual orientation were more frequent among those reporting job discrimination. In a Cox proportional hazards model adjusting for covariates, report of at least one type of job discrimination (compared to none) was associated with a 14% (hazard ratio = 1.14 [95% confidence: 1.02–1.27]) higher hypertension risk. Results from sensitivity analyses reinforced the findings. Conclusions: Results suggest that interventions addressing job discrimination could have workplace equity and health benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How does literacy develop in children's early years, and what programs or practices promote adequate literacy for all children? These are the questions Catherine Snow and Timothy Matthews tackle in this article. Fundamental literacy skills can be grouped into two categories, Snow and Matthews write. The first category is "constrained" skills, which are readily teachable because they're finite: for example, the 26 letters of the alphabet, or a set of 20 to 30 common spelling rules. These skills have a ceiling; young children can and do achieve perfect performance. As they grow older, though, children need to understand words rarely encountered in spoken language and to integrate new information they encounter with relevant background information. Vocabulary and background knowledge are examples of "unconstrained" skills-- large domains of knowledge acquired gradually through experience. Unconstrained skills are particularly important for children's long-term literacy success (that is, success in outcomes measured after third grade). Compared to constrained skills, they're also more strongly predicted by children's social class or their parents' education, and more difficult to teach in the classroom. And because of their open-ended nature, unconstrained skills are also much harder to test for. Snow and Matthews write that a drop in literacy scores we see as US children move from elementary to middle school suggests that our schools may be focusing too much on constrained skills--and too little on unconstrained ones--in the early grades. The authors review promising programs and practices for enhancing both constrained and unconstrained skills, ranging from comprehensive school-improvement programs to efforts to improve curricula and teachers' professional development--although they note that vast differences in programs' scope, cost, targets, and theories of change make comparing them difficult. Another challenge is that it's hard to maintain quality and consistency when implementing complex programs over time. Snow and Matthews suggest that to improve young children's success with literacy, it might be better to introduce and evaluate promising practices that can be mixed and matched, rather than complex programs that are implemented as a package.

This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children's educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home-visit measures of parenting: the E-Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers' and children's education-associated genetics, summarized in a genome-wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting--a gene-environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children's attainment--indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers' genetics were associated with children's attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting--an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents' effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission.

Objectives Leisure-time physical activity (LTPA) can reduce the risk of incident diabetes, whereas the role of occupational physical activity (OPA) in developing diabetes is still unclear due to conflicting evidence. Moreover, the joint associations of OPA and LTPA with incident diabetes among US workers have not yet been systematically examined. The objective of this study was to assess the independent and joint associations of OPA and LTPA with incident diabetes. Methods This prospective cohort study included 1406 workers free from diabetes at baseline (2004–2006) from the national, population-based Mid-life in the United States (MIDUS) study. Associations of OPA and LTPA at baseline with incident diabetes during 9 years of follow-up were examined using Poisson regression models. High OPA was defined based on engagement in physical demands at work, and high LTPA was defined as participation in moderate or vigorous LTPA at least once per week. Results High OPA was associated with an increased risk of diabetes compared to low OPA (adjusted risk ratios and 95% confidence interval = 1.52 [1.04, 2.22]), while high LTPA was associated with a decreased risk of diabetes compared to low LTPA (0.66 [0.44, 0.97]). Diabetes risk was the highest among workers with high OPA and low LTPA (2.30 [1.30, 4.07]). Conclusions In a national, population-based prospective cohort study of US workers, high OPA was associated with an elevated risk of diabetes, while high LTPA was associated with a decreased diabetes risk. The combination of high OPA and low LTPA exhibited the greatest risk of diabetes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Older brain age – as estimated from structural MRI data – is known to be associated with detrimental mental and physical health outcomes in older adults. Social isolation, which has similar detrimental effects on health, may be associated with accelerated brain aging though little is known about how different trajectories of social isolation across the life course moderate this association. We examined the associations between social isolation trajectories from age 5 to age 38 and brain age assessed at age 45. Methods: We previously created a typology of social isolation based on onset during the life course and persistence into adulthood, using group-based trajectory analysis of longitudinal data from a New Zealand birth cohort. The typology comprises four groups: 'never-isolated', 'adult-only', 'child-only', and persistent 'child-adult' isolation. A brain age gap estimate (brainAGE) – the difference between predicted age from structural MRI date and chronological age – was derived at age 45. We undertook analyses of brainAGE with trajectory group as the predictor, adjusting for sex, family socio-economic status, and a range of familial and child-behavioral factors. Results: Older brain age in mid-adulthood was associated with trajectories of social isolation after adjustment for family and child confounders, particularly for the 'adult-only' group compared to the 'never-isolated' group. Conclusions: Although our findings are associational, they indicate that preventing social isolation, particularly in mid-adulthood, may help to avert accelerated brain aging associated with negative health outcomes later in life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study was to disentangle pervasive from situational antisocial behaviors using multiple informants, and to investigate their genetic and environmental etiologies in preadolescence and across time. Antisocial behaviors were assessed in 2,232 twins from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study at ages 5 and 12. Pervasive antisocial behaviors were defined as behaviors that mothers, teachers, interviewers, and twins themselves agreed on. Results from a psychometric model indicated that the variation in children's pervasive antisocial behaviors was mostly accounted for by familial influences that originated in childhood, whereas situational behaviors were explained by newly emerging nonshared environmental and genetic influences. This study shows that children's pervasive and situational antisocial behaviors have distinct etiologies that could guide research and treatment.

Job strain is considered a potential risk factor of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Our objective was to examine prospective associations of job strain with CVD mortality using data from the national, population-based Mid-life in the United States (MIDUS) cohort study, while considering changes in job strain. Job strain measure was based on Demand-Control model at Wave 1 in 1995–1996 and Wave 2 in 2004–2006, and CVD mortality data through 2018 were retrieved through linkage to the National Death Index (NDI). Cox proportional hazards regression was applied to assess prospective associations between job strain across MIDUS I and MIDUS II and CVD mortality at follow-up in 1,870 workers free from CVD at MIDUS I. After adjustment for relevant covariates, single measurement of job strain at MIDUS I or MIDUS II, and two measurements of job strain between the two waves were not significantly associated with CVD mortality, while the increase in scores between the two waves (increase vs. no increase) demonstrated stronger prospective associations with CVD mortality (HR and 95% CI = 2.37 [0.88, 6.42]). Our findings suggest increased job strain may pose a stronger risk to CVD mortality than single exposure measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stress is a key driver of cardiovascular disease (CVD), yet the contribution of psychosocial stressors to the development of CVD has not been systematically examined in United States (U.S.) populations. The objective of this study was to assess prospective associations of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), social isolation, and job strain with CVD mortality. Data were from the large, nationally representative, population-based Health and Retirement Study (HRS). ACEs, social isolation and job strain were assessed using validated survey instruments at baseline between 2006–2008, and death information was followed up through 2018. Cox proportional hazards regression models were used to examine prospective associations of ACEs, social isolation, and job strain with CVD mortality among 4046 older employees free from CVD at baseline. During 42,149 person-years of follow-up time, 59 death cases of CVD were reported. After adjustment for covariates, ACEs and job strain were significantly associated with increased risk of CVD mortality (aHR and 95% CI = 3.67 [1.59, 8.48] and 2.24 [1.21, 4.11], respectively), whereas social isolation demonstrated an inflated but nonsignificant association (aHR and 95% CI = 1.62 [0.72, 3.66]). These findings highlight the role of psychosocial exposures as novel and clinically relevant risk factors for CVD. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study examined patterns of stability and change in loneliness across adolescence. Data were drawn from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a UK population-representative cohort of 2,232 individuals born in 1994 and 1995. Loneliness was assessed when participants were aged 12 and 18. Loneliness showed modest stability across these ages (r =.25). Behavioral genetic modeling indicated that stability in loneliness was explained largely by genetic influences (66%), while change was explained by nonshared environmental effects (58%). Individuals who reported loneliness at both ages were broadly similar to individuals who only reported it at age 18, with both groups at elevated risk of mental health problems, physical health risk behaviors, and education and employment difficulties. Individuals who were lonely only at age 12 generally fared better; however, they were still more likely to finish school with lower qualifications. Positive family influences in childhood predicted reduced risk of loneliness at age 12, while negative peer experiences increased the risk. Together, the findings show that while early adolescent loneliness does not appear to exert a cumulative burden when it persists, it is nonetheless a risk for a range of concomitant impairments, some of which can endure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hypertension is a key driver of cardiovascular diseases. However, how stressors contribute to the development of hypertension remains unclear. The objective of this study was to examine prospective associations of adverse childhood experiences (ACEs) and adulthood psychosocial disadvantages (APDs) with incident hypertension. Data were from the Mid-life in the United States (MIDUS) study, a national, population-based, prospective cohort study. ACEs were examined via retrospective reports, and APDs including work stress and social isolation were assessed using survey measures. Incident hypertension was defined based on self-reported physician diagnosis. Baseline data were collected in 1995, with follow-up in 2004–2006 and 2013–2014. Cox proportional hazards regression was applied to assess prospective associations of ACEs and APDs with incident hypertension in 2568 workers free from hypertension at baseline. After adjustment for covariates, baseline APDs were associated with increased incident hypertension (aHR and 95% CI = 1.48 [1.09, 2.01]) during a 20-year follow-up, whereas ACEs showed null associations. Moreover, a moderating effect by ACEs was observed—the effect of APDs on risk of hypertension was stronger when ACEs were present (aHR and 95% CI = 1.83 [1.17, 2.86]). These findings underscore the importance of psychosocial stressors as nontraditional risk factors of cardiometabolic disorders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The opioid crisis in the United States (U.S.) is widespread and increasing in severity, and psychosocial exposures have been identified as potential risk factors. We examined associations of employment status with opioid misuse in a large, nationally representative, population-based sample in the U.S. Data were from the 2019 National Survey of Drug Use and Health (NSDUH), an annual cross-sectional survey. The association of employment status with opioid misuse in 40,143 participants was examined by multivariable logistic regression, adjusting for age, sex, race/ethnicity, marital status, household income, educational attainment, medical insurance status, physical health conditions and depression. Analyses were weighted to represent a nationally representative sample of adults in the U.S. In NSDUH 2019, 3.82% of American individuals reported past-year opioid misuse. After taking relevant variables into account, compared to workers who were employed with normal working hours (35–40 h/week), those who were currently unemployed had higher odds of opioid misuse (fully adjusted odds ratio and 95% confidence interval were 1.40 [1.09, 1.79]). Compared to workers employed with normal working hours, those who were in school/training or retired had lower odds of opioid misuse. Short or long working hours were not associated with opioid misuse. Government and employer policy interventions may benefit from emphasizing stable employment as a major social determinant of health in the context of the opioid crisis. • The opioid crisis in the U.S. is widespread and increasing in severity. • Unemployment was significantly associated with opioid misuse. • Short or long working hours were not associated with opioid misuse. • Stable employment may be a major social determinant against opioid crisis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The COVID-19 pandemic has precipitated broad and extensive changes in the way people live and work. While the general subject of working from home has recently drawn increased attention, few studies have assessed gender differences in vulnerability to the potential mental health effects of working from home. Using data from 1,585 workers who participated in the Health, Ethnicity, and Pandemic (HEAP) study, a national survey conducted in the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic in October 2020, associations of working from home with psychological distress were examined with weighted logistic regression among 1,585 workers and stratified by gender. It was found that workers who worked from home had higher odds of psychological distress (aOR and 95% CI = 2.62 [1.46, 4.70]) compared to workers who did not work from home, adjusting for demographic factors, socioeconomic status, and health behaviors. In gender-stratified analyses, this positive association between working from home and psychological distress was significant in women (aOR and 95% CI = 3.68 [1.68, 8.09]) but not in men. These results have implications for female workers' mental health in the transition towards working from home in the COVID-19 pandemic era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study used a longitudinal and discordant twin design to explore in depth the developmental associations between victimization and loneliness from mid-childhood to young adulthood. The data were drawn from the Environmental Risk (E-Risk) Longitudinal Twin Study, a birth cohort of 2,232 individuals born in England and Wales during 1994–1995. Diverse forms of victimization were considered, differing across context, perpetrator, and timing of exposure. The results indicated that exposure to different forms of victimization was associated with loneliness in a dose–response manner. In childhood, bullying victimization was uniquely associated with loneliness, over and above concurrent psychopathology, social isolation, and genetic risk. Moreover, childhood bullying victimization continued to predict loneliness in young adulthood, even in the absence of ongoing victimization. Within-twin pair analyses further indicated that this longitudinal association was explained by genetic confounds. In adolescence, varied forms of victimization were correlated with young adult loneliness, with maltreatment, neglect, and cybervictimization remaining robust to controls for genetic confounds. These findings indicate that vulnerability to loneliness in victimized young people varies according to the specific form of victimization in question, and also to the developmental period in which it was experienced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]