IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/plo/pone00/0243457.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Assessing mental health in a context of extreme poverty: Validation of the rosenberg self-esteem scale in rural Haiti

Author

Listed:
  • Keetie Roelen
  • Emily Taylor

Abstract

A widening evidence base across low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) points towards mutually reinforcing linkages between poverty and mental health problems. The use of validated and culturally relevant measures of mental health outcomes is crucial to the expansion of evidence. At present, there is a paucity of measures that have been tested and validated in contexts of extreme poverty. Using data from adult women living in extreme poverty in rural Haiti this study assesses the cross-cultural validity of the widely used Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale (RSES) and its applicability in assessing linkages between poverty and mental health outcomes. We find no evidence for a one-dimensional 10-factor structure of the RSES within our data and agree with other authors that the standard self-esteem model does not fit well in this cultural context. Comparisons with another widely used measure of mental health–the K6 measure–indicate that the RSES cannot be used as a proxy for mental health outcomes. We conclude that the use of the RSES in different cultural contexts and with samples with different socioeconomic characteristics should be undertaken with caution; and that greater consideration of the validity of psychosocial constructs and their measurement is vital for gaining robust and replicable insights into breaking the cycle between poverty and mental health problems.

Suggested Citation

  • Keetie Roelen & Emily Taylor, 2020. "Assessing mental health in a context of extreme poverty: Validation of the rosenberg self-esteem scale in rural Haiti," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(12), pages 1-14, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0243457
    DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0243457
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243457
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0243457&type=printable
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1371/journal.pone.0243457?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Tampubolon, Gindo & Hanandita, Wulung, 2014. "Poverty and mental health in Indonesia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 20-27.
    2. Das, Jishnu & Do, Quy-Toan & Friedman, Jed & McKenzie, David & Scott, Kinnon, 2008. "Revisiting the relationship between mental health and poverty in developing countries: a response to Corrigall," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 2064-2066, May.
    3. Albert Satorra & Peter Bentler, 2001. "A scaled difference chi-square test statistic for moment structure analysis," Psychometrika, Springer;The Psychometric Society, vol. 66(4), pages 507-514, December.
    4. Johannes Haushofer & Jeremy Shapiro, 2016. "The Short-term Impact of Unconditional Cash Transfers to the Poor: ExperimentalEvidence from Kenya," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 131(4), pages 1973-2042.
    5. Das, Jishnu & Do, Quy-Toan & Friedman, Jed & McKenzie, David & Scott, Kinnon, 2007. "Mental health and poverty in developing countries: Revisiting the relationship," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 65(3), pages 467-480, August.
    6. Vasilis Stavropoulos & Helen Lazaratou & Euterpi Marini & Dimitris Dikeos, 2015. "Low Family Satisfaction and Depression in Adolescence: The Role of Self-Esteem," Journal of Educational and Developmental Psychology, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 5(2), pages 109-109, November.
    7. Lund, Crick & Breen, Alison & Flisher, Alan J. & Kakuma, Ritsuko & Corrigall, Joanne & Joska, John A. & Swartz, Leslie & Patel, Vikram, 2010. "Poverty and common mental disorders in low and middle income countries: A systematic review," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 71(3), pages 517-528, August.
    8. Hanandita, Wulung & Tampubolon, Gindo, 2014. "Does poverty reduce mental health? An instrumental variable analysis," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 113(C), pages 59-67.
    9. Corrigall, Joanne & Lund, Crick & Patel, Vikram & Plagerson, Sophie & Funk, Michelle K., 2008. "Poverty and mental illness: Fact or fiction? A commentary on Das, Do, Friedman, McKenzie & Scott (65:3, 2007, 467-480)," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 66(9), pages 2061-2063, May.
    10. Hongfei Du & Ronnel B King & Peilian Chi, 2017. "Self-esteem and subjective well-being revisited: The roles of personal, relational, and collective self-esteem," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 12(8), pages 1-17, August.
    11. Keys, Hunter M. & Kaiser, Bonnie N. & Kohrt, Brandon A. & Khoury, Nayla M. & Brewster, Aimée-Rika T., 2012. "Idioms of distress, ethnopsychology, and the clinical encounter in Haiti's Central Plateau," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(3), pages 555-564.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Magdalena Dąbrowska-Galas & Agnieszka Drosdzol-Cop, 2022. "The Relationship between Postmenopausal Women’s Self-Esteem and Physical Activity Level—A Survey Study from Poland," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 19(15), pages 1-10, August.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Kumar, Sneha, 2021. "Offspring's labor migration and its implications for elderly parents' emotional wellbeing in Indonesia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 276(C).
    2. Nicolas Barrantes & Jhonatan Clausen, 2022. "Does Multidimensional Poverty Affect Depression? Evidence from Peru," Progress in Development Studies, , vol. 22(2), pages 107-129, April.
    3. Chang, Qingsong & Peng, Chenhong & Guo, Yingqi & Cai, Ziyi & Yip, Paul S.F., 2020. "Mechanisms connecting objective and subjective poverty to mental health: Serial mediation roles of negative life events and social support," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 265(C).
    4. Andersen, Asbjørn G. & Kotsadam, Andreas & Somville, Vincent, 2022. "Material resources and well-being — Evidence from an Ethiopian housing lottery," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(C).
    5. Cornelius Christian & Lukas Hensel & Christopher Roth, 2019. "Income Shocks and Suicides: Causal Evidence From Indonesia," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 101(5), pages 905-920, December.
    6. Bierman, Alex & Upenieks, Laura & Glavin, Paul & Schieman, Scott, 2021. "Accumulation of economic hardship and health during the COVID-19 pandemic: Social causation or selection?," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 275(C).
    7. Ana Maria Buller & Amber Peterman & Meghna Ranganathan & Alexandra Bleile & Melissa Hidrobo & Lori Heise, 2018. "A Mixed-Method Review of Cash Transfers and Intimate Partner Violence in Low- and Middle-Income Countries," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 33(2), pages 218-258.
    8. Laura Rodríguez, 2022. "Violence and newborn health: Estimates for Colombia," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 31(1), pages 112-136, January.
    9. McGuire, Joel & Kaiser, Caspar & Bach-Mortensen, Anders, 2020. "The impact of cash transfers on subjective well-being and mental health in low- and middle- income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis," SocArXiv ydr54, Center for Open Science.
    10. Piperata, Barbara A. & Schmeer, Kammi K. & Rodrigues, Andres Herrera & Salazar Torres, Virgilio Mariano, 2016. "Food insecurity and maternal mental health in León, Nicaragua: Potential limitations on the moderating role of social support," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 171(C), pages 9-17.
    11. Zhilei Shi & Hao Dong, 2022. "The Lasting Health Impact of Early-Life Chronic Poverty: Evidence from Starvation Experiences in Rural China," Population Research and Policy Review, Springer;Southern Demographic Association (SDA), vol. 41(3), pages 1359-1384, June.
    12. Rachel Jenkins & Joseph Mbatia & Nicola Singleton & Bethany White, 2010. "Common Mental Disorders and Risk Factors in Urban Tanzania," IJERPH, MDPI, vol. 7(6), pages 1-16, June.
    13. Hjelm, Lisa & Handa, Sudhanshu & de Hoop, Jacobus & Palermo, Tia, 2017. "Poverty and perceived stress: Evidence from two unconditional cash transfer programs in Zambia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 177(C), pages 110-117.
    14. Xinyi Zhao & Yue-Hui Yu & Man-Man Peng & Wei Luo & Shi-Hui Hu & Xin Yang & Bo Liu & Tin Zhang & Ru Gao & Cecilia Lai-Wan Chan & Mao-Sheng Ran, 2021. "Change of poverty and outcome of persons with severe mental illness in rural China, 1994-2015," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 67(4), pages 315-323, June.
    15. de Bruijn, Ernst-Jan & Antonides, Gerrit, 2020. "Determinants of financial worry and rumination," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 76(C).
    16. Cole, Steven M. & Tembo, Gelson, 2011. "The effect of food insecurity on mental health: Panel evidence from rural Zambia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 73(7), pages 1071-1079.
    17. Eddy Eustache & Margaret E Gerbasi & Mary C Smith Fawzi & J Reginald Fils-Aimé & Jennifer Severe & Giuseppe J Raviola & Rupinder Legha & Sarah Darghouth & David J Grelotti & Tatiana Thérosmé & Erma, 2017. "High burden of mental illness and low utilization of care among school-going youth in Central Haiti: A window into the youth mental health treatment gap in a low-income country," International Journal of Social Psychiatry, , vol. 63(3), pages 261-274, May.
    18. Jin, Yinzi & Zhu, Dawei & He, Ping, 2020. "Social causation or social selection? The longitudinal interrelationship between poverty and depressive symptoms in China," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 249(C).
    19. Tampubolon, Gindo & Hanandita, Wulung, 2014. "Poverty and mental health in Indonesia," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 20-27.
    20. Edward N. Okeke, 2021. "Money and my mind: Maternal cash transfers and mental health," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(11), pages 2879-2904, November.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:plo:pone00:0243457. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: plosone (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://journals.plos.org/plosone/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.