mid-adulthood: Results from the prospective Northern Swedish

Socioeconomic status (SES) is a well-established social determinant of poor mental health with higher levels of poor mental health among lower socioeco-nomic groups [1,2]. For major psychiatric disorders (i.e. schizophrenia, major depression and anxiety dis-orders) the support is uniform [3], whereas associa-tions with more common mental health problems (e.g. symptoms of depression and anxiety) are not as clear-cut [4]. Direct measures of economic resources, such as income, material standard of living or economic hardship, seem to be the strongest socioeconomic determinants of common mental health problems compared with measures based on occupation or educational status [4–8]. A shortage of money has therefore been conceptualized as a situation of eco-nomic stress that may lead to adverse health conse-quences [9]. However, economic burdens can occur at different life course periods and their impact on health may be more than momentary. In addition to health adversi-ties at the specific occasion of economic stress, there can also be long-term effects over the life course. Several life course models of the association between socioeconomy and health have been suggested [10,11] and we will discuss two of them. The accu-mulation (or cumulative risk) model suggests that Life course models of economic stress and poor mental health i