Relationship between Education and Mental Health: New Evidence from Twin Study

The study argues that the positive relationship between mental health and higher levels of education is due to confounding factors. The take home message seems to be that higher levels education is not important to mental health.<p>I think the larger narrative here is that higher education is not as important to success as previously believed. Was someone successful because they went to college, or were they already on a trajectory for success, and they just happened to attend college because they were offered a free ride?

Full text on SciHub: <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sci-hub.cc&#x2F;10.1093&#x2F;sf&#x2F;sow035" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;sci-hub.cc&#x2F;10.1093&#x2F;sf&#x2F;sow035</a> (PDF)

So in short, by comparing identical twins, this study found that people with better mental health tended to achieve a higher education, meaning that the arrow of causality doesn&#x27;t go the other way: education doesn&#x27;t necessarily improve mental health.

TL:DR &quot;If there are social factors that systematically drive differences in mental health within pairs of MZ twins, our findings suggest that education is not among them.&quot;

&quot;confounding factors. &quot;<p>I&#x27;m going to go ahead and state the obvious. School systems (all social systems) filter for (relatively) functionally stable individuals. This is the case with the work-force too, and easily explains the correlation between the unemployed and the mentally ill. One does not cause the other, one filters out the other.<p>I guess it&#x27;s easy to ignore this dark possibility; it would imply deep, and possibly irreparable facts of human nature.

Nice to see this linked to the original article rather than to a pop article misrepresenting it.

I don&#x27;t see the surprise however.

The title is misleading, though the original is not descriptive. Suggestion: &quot;Higher education does not improve mental health, twin-study proves&quot;

sociology was right.