Socioeconomic status and mental health

Numerous studies around the world have found a relationship between socioeconomic status and mental health. There are higher rates of mental illness in groups with lower socioeconomic status (SES), but there is no clear consensus on the exact causative factors. The two principal models that attempt to explain this relationship are the social causation theory, which posits that socioeconomic inequality causes stress that gives rise to mental illness, and the downward drift approach, which assumes that people predisposed to mental illness are reduced in socioeconomic status as a result of the illness. Most literature on these concepts dates back to the mid-1990s and leans heavily towards the social causation model.