[Socioeconomic inequalities and mental health. II. Methodological aspects and literature review].

OBJECTIVE: This study provides a framework for mental health inequalities beginners. It describes the methods used to measure socio economic inequalities and the inter-relations with different aspects of mental health: residence, mental health services organisation and main diagnostic categories.
METHOD: Literature electronic-search on Medline, Psyclit, Econlit, Social Science Index and SocioSearch using and relating the key-words inequalities, deprivation, poverty, socio-economic status, social class, occupational class, mental health for the period 1965-2002 (June). The articles selected were integrated with manual search (publications of the same authors, cross-references, working documents and reports of international and regional organisations).
RESULTS: Inequality is not an absolute concept and, mainly, it has been changing during the last years. For example, the integration and re-definition of variables that capture, in simple indices, a complex reality; the accent on social more than on economic aspects; the geo-validity and time-reference of the inequality's indices. Moreover, the inequalities could be the result of individual preferences, in this case, the social selection and social causation issues will raise the suitability for a public intervention.
CONCLUSIONS: Up to now, research has been mainly concentrated in describing and measuring health inequalities. For designing effective interventions, policy makers need to ground decisions on health-socioeconomic inequalities explanatory models.