Determinants of Mental Health

“Mental health and mental illness are multi-faceted and related to a range of social, psychological and biological factors. While most psychiatric conditions have genetic underpinnings, social and environmental factors also exert a substantive influence in that they predispose individuals toward psychopathology through gene–environment interactions and epigenetic mechanism. The chain of socio-economic factors leading to an adverse mental health outcome includes both proximal and distal causes. Proximal factors, such as familial influence, neighborhood conditions and school environments act almost directly to cause disease. Distal factors, on the other hand, are national level factors, such as social inequalities, that act via proximal causes. There has been a good deal of research on the influence of proximal factors, and evidence-based interventions based on them. The empirical research on structural determinates (distal factors) is under progress at the global level. The role of a country’s health system and community resources has also an important influence on mental health issues. The present study is an attempt to provide a  comprehensive view of all the dimensions needed for ameliorating mental well-being in a country. One major and unique feature of this study is the assessing the relative role of prominent structural determinants through using Partial Least Square (PLS) model on a cross-sectional data of OECD countries”