Joury, E., Nakhleh, E., Beveridge, E. et al. (12 more authors) (2025) Can social adversity and mental, physical and oral multimorbidity form a syndemic? A concept and protocol paper. Frontiers in Psychiatry, 15.
Abstract
Background: Clustering mental, physical and oral conditions reduce drastically the life expectancy. These conditions are precipitated and perpetuated by adverse social, economic, environmental, political and healthcare contextual factors, and sustained through bidirectional interactions forming potentially a ‘syndemic’. No previous study has investigated such potential syndemic. Thus, the present project aimed to (i) test for syndemic interactions between social adversity (socioeconomic adversity and traumatic events) and mental, physical and oral multimorbidity using the syndemic theoretical framework; and (ii) determine whether the syndemic relationships vary by age, sex and ethnicity.
Methods: Data from three large-scale population-based databases: UK BioBank, US National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) and the Research with East London Adolescents Community Health Survey (RELACHS) will be analysed. Structural equation modelling (SEM) will be utilised to conceptualise syndemic factors and model complex relationships between directly observed and indirectly observed (latent) variables (syndemic constructs).
Discussion: the syndemic conceptualisation provides a valuable framework to understand health and illness, and hence to better design and deliver effective and cost-effective preventative and curative integrated (syndemic) care to improve patient and population health. Such syndemic care aims to address the social determinants of health, whilst simultaneously managing all interlocked conditions.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2025 Joury, Nakhleh, Beveridge, Tracy, Heidari, Shiers, Vereeken, Peckham, Gilbody, Das-Munshi, Fortune, Aggarwal, Mishu, Firth and Bhui. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC-BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Keywords: | mental disorders, physical conditions, dental diseases, syndemics, conceptualisation, methodology, integrated care, health equity |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Medicine and Health (Leeds) > School of Dentistry (Leeds) > Oral Surgery (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 27 Jan 2025 16:12 |
Last Modified: | 27 Jan 2025 16:12 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Frontiers Media |
Identification Number: | 10.3389/fpsyt.2024.1426054 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:222306 |
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