MENTAL HEALTH AND ADJUSTMENT IN THE LIFE COURSE

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This application requests support to continue a research training program focused on the psychosocial determinants of mental health and behavioral adjustment through the life course. This interdisciplinary program emphasizes a life course perspective on the changing social contexts of development, trajectories of mental health and behavioral adaptation; longitudinal assessment and the application of dynamic modeling techniques to understand variation in life course trajectories; special at risk populations; and social policy. The training experience, for 4 predoctoral students and 2 postdoctoral students consists of core seminars, formal coursework, and a research apprenticeship. Guidance with respect to the responsible conduct of research is provided through coursework and training activities. Predoctoral trainees will be supported for three years; postdoctoral trainees for two years. The core faculty represent the Department of Sociology (College of Liberal Arts), the Child Development Institute (College of Education), and the Division of Health Services Research, Policy, and Administration (School of Public Health) at the University of Minnesota. With full access to the resources of those units (including laboratory and survey facilities, special libraries, and computers), trainees from these disciplines will be involved in studies of early work experience, mental health, and the transition to adulthood; the joint development of autonomy and intimacy; the sources of competence and resilience in the face of adversity; physical and relational aggression; the life course consequences of victimization; cognitive and emotional factors in decision-making in criminal/ delinquent and work behavior; perceptions of criminal sanctions and their efficacy in inhibiting offending; female inmates? adaptations to prison life as a function of prior life experiences and trajectories of deviance and reintegration. The interests of the faculty and the character of the three participating units make this program well-suited to provide training that bridges basic science, applied service and intervention, and social policy. Trainees will have research opportunities to address the effects of health care policy on high risk and vulnerable (including the chronically mentally ill), the emergence of deviant non-compliance through doctor-patient interaction.