Ronald C. Kessler – författare

On any given day, nearly half a million children are served by foster care services in the U.S. at an annual cost of over $25 billion. Growing demand and shrinking funds have so greatly stressed the child welfare system that calls for orphanages have re-entered the public debate for the first time in nearly half a century. New ideas are desperately needed to transform a system in crisis, guarantee better outcomes for children in foster care, and reduce the need for out-of-home care in the first place.Yet little is known about what works in foster care. Very few studies have examined how alumni have fared as adults or tracked long-term health effects, and even fewer have directly compared different foster care services. In one of the most comprehensive studies of adults formerly in foster care ever conducted, the Northwest Foster Care Alumni Study found that quality foster care services for children pay big dividends when they grow into adults. Key investments in highly trained staff, low caseloads, and robust supplementary services can dramatically reduce the rates of mental disorders and substance abuse later in life and increase the likelihood of completing education beyond high school and remaining employed. The results of this unparalleled study document not only the more favorable outcomes for youth who receive better services but the overall return when an investment is made in high quality foster care: every dollar invested in a child generates $1.50 in benefits to society. These findings form the core of this book's blueprint for reform.By keeping more children with their families and investing additional funds in enhanced foster care services, child welfare agencies have the opportunity to greatly improve the health, well being, and economic prospects for foster care alumni. What Works in Foster Care? presents a model foster care program that promises to revolutionize the way policymakers, administrators, case workers, and researchers think about protecting our most vulnerable youth.

How physically and psychologically healthy are Americans at midlife? And why do some experience greater well-being than others? The MacArthur Foundation addressed these questions head-on by funding a landmark study known as "Midlife in the U.S." (MIDUS). "How Healthy Are We?" presents the key findings from the survey in three sections: physical health, quality of life and psychological well-being, and the contexts of midlife. This wide-ranging study measures not only health - the absence of illness - but also reports on the presence of wellness in middle-aged Americans. Researchers, policymakers, and others concerned with the quality of midlife will welcome its insights.

A recent study of productivity in the workplace revealed that workers spend on average eight percent of their workday doing nothing. This statistic takes on greater significance when we find that health problems impact employee productivity loss by an even greater percentage. In light of this discovery, a group of leading experts from the emerging field of health and productivity research argues that the expansion of health care benefits represents a substantial investment opportunity for employers. "Health and Work Productivity" presents state-of-the-art health and productivity research that suggests interventions aimed at prevention, early detection, and best-practice treatment of workers along with an informed allocation strategy can produce significant cost-benefits for employers. Contributors cover all the major aspects of this new area of research: approaches to studying the effects of health on productivity, ways for employers to estimate the costs of productivity loss, concrete suggestions for future research developments in the area, and the implications of this research for public policy.

Methodological problems have hampered researchers' efforts to understand and control AIDS since the beginning of the epidemic. This practical book addresses these problems by using actual health research case studies to develop strategies regarding design and sampling, measurement, and analysis and modeling issues. Researchers working on both biological and behavioral aspects of the disease will find this work a singularly effective tool to improve their study designs.

Mental disorders have profound social, cultural, and economic effects throughout the world. Although most psychiatry and psychology texts provide some basic data on the prevalence and treatment of mental disorders, no previous book ever presented such data with the breadth or depth of the current volume. Reported here are the first results of the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative, a highly ambitious series of cross-national psychiatric epidemiological surveys. The general population surveys in the WMH series span 17 countries in all parts of the world. In many of these countries the WMH surveys provide the first community epidemiological data ever available on mental disorders in the population. The detailed information on lifetime prevalence, age of onset, course, correlates, and treatment of mental disorders in this volume provides mental health professionals and healthcare policy planners with an unprecedented reference on the cross-national descriptive epidemiology of mental disorders.

Mental disorders have profound social, cultural, and economic effects throughout the world. Although most psychiatry and psychology texts provide some basic data on the prevalence and treatment of mental disorders, no previous book ever presented such data with the breadth or depth of the current volume. Reported here are the first results of the WHO World Mental Health (WMH) Survey Initiative, a highly ambitious series of cross-national psychiatric epidemiological surveys. The general population surveys in the WMH series span 17 countries in all parts of the world. In many of these countries the WMH surveys provide the first community epidemiological data ever available on mental disorders in the population. The detailed information on lifetime prevalence, age of onset, course, correlates, and treatment of mental disorders in this volume provides mental health professionals and healthcare policy planners with an unprecedented reference on the cross-national descriptive epidemiology of mental disorders.

This unique book presents original research from the largest cross-national survey of the epidemiology of mental disorders ever conducted. It provides the latest findings from the WHO World Mental Health Surveys based on interviews of nearly 150,000 individuals in twenty-six countries on six continents. The book is ordered by specific disorder, with individual chapters dedicated to presenting detailed findings on the prevalence, onset timing, sociodemographic profile, comorbidity, associated impairment and treatment for eighteen mental disorders. There is also discussion of important cross-national consistencies in the epidemiology of mental disorders and highlighting of intriguing patterns of cross-national variation. This is one of the most comprehensive summaries of the epidemiology of mental disorders ever published, making this an invaluable resource for researchers, clinicians, students and policy-makers in the fields of mental and public health.