Characteristics of Adults With Serious Mental Illness in the United States in 2007.

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Article Review
Part A: Summary
The article titled “Characteristics of Adults With Serious Mental Illness in the United States Household Population in 2007” presents the report of a study conducted by Laura Pratt with the aim of describing serious mental illness epidemiology in the United States’ adult population. In this correlational study, the author used data collected from NHIS of 2007 in which 23,393 adults participated. From these data, the author described the health characteristics of the participants who had serious mental illnesses. Analysis of the data showed that serious mental illnesses placed adults in a socially disadvantaged position and resulted in worse health compared to their normal counterpart.
Part B: Reaction
Question 2. The study followed a correlational design and produced a positive correlation between serious mental illnesses and poor health characteristics and social disadvantages. In this design, the independent variable was mental illness while the dependent variables were poor health characteristics and social disadvantages. The experimental group was the adults with mental illnesses while the control group was normal adults.
Question 3. The correlational design used in this study has the strength of being quick and easy to conduct since it can use existing data. It also has the strength of ability to describe how strong or weak the relationship between variables is.
Question 4. Correlations produced by this design are not causation thus they may mislead one into believing that one variable causes another when in the real sense there is a third variable that causes the two variables to change simultaneously.

Question 5. This study was ethical since it used data from an ethical study. At the time of conducting the NHIS study which produced the data used in this study, informed consent was obtained. Moreover, the present study has maintained the anonymity of the study participants.
Question 6. With a sample of 23, 393 adults of different sexes and varying adult ages, the results produced were an effective representative of the population.
Question 7. While researcher and participant bias is common in research, none was identified for this study.
Question 8. Based on the stated limitations of this study, it could be improved if data sources other than self-reports were used. Further studies could be undertaken to understand why there is a positive correlation between serious mental illness and poor health characteristics and social disadvantages.
Works Cited
Pratt, Laura Ann. “Characteristics of adults with serious mental illness in the United States household population in 2007.” Psychiatric Services 63.10 (2012): 1042-1046.