On June 5, 2025 Baojing Li successfully defended her PhD thesis, Misfortune (dis)continues across generations. Multigenerational studies linking socioeconomic and psychosocial disadvantages to psychiatric disorders.
Mental health problems contribute substantially to the disease burden in Sweden and worldwide. Such problems are not evenly distributed in the population and are, to a large extent, socially determined. The overall aim of this thesis is to investigate the multigenerational associations and mechanisms between socioeconomic and psychosocial disadvantages and mental health problems, as well as potential gender differences. Drawing on data from the Stockholm Birth Cohort Multigenerational Study that encompasses local and national survey- and register-based data across three generations, and through employing structural equation modeling techniques, a series of four empirical studies was conducted.
Baojing’s thesis can be downloaded at: DiVA
Q: Can you tell us a bit about your academic background and what led you to pursue a PhD?
I have both a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in global health. During my bachelor’s, I developed a strong research interest in mental health inequalities by focusing on mental health of minority groups such as prison medical workers and LGBTQ+ populations. When I studied for my master’s and worked as a research assistant at Karolinska Institutet, I recommitted myself to continuing mental health inequality research through investigating the intra- and inter-generational associations between educational level and mental health using a register-based approach. The doctoral project at Stockholm University has allowed me to go a step further in inequality research to explore the reproduction of inequalities in social conditions and mental health across multiple generations.
Q: What is the focus of your PhD thesis?
I focus on the multigenerational associations and mechanisms between socioeconomic and psychosocial disadvantages, as well as mental health problems from a gender perspective.
Q: What are some of the key questions your research is addressing?
One of the key questions I address in the second part of my thesis is the exploration of risk and protective factors in the family and school context among the parental generation, reflective of both vulnerability and resilience, that may help further explain the continuity and discontinuity in the associations between grandparental socioeconomic disadvantages and grandchild mental health problems. Particularly in my study IV, I have tried to zoom into the parental generation to understand whether their childhood factors played a relevant role for the mediation effect we found in study III, that parental adulthood psychosocial disadvantages fully mediate the association between grandparental socioeconomic disadvantages and grandchild mental health disorders. As part of my work on study IV, I completed a research visit at University College London to work with Professor Ingrid Schoon, whose key research interests lie in the study of risk and resilience.
Q: How do you hope your research will contribute to the field?
I hope my research sheds light on tackling specific domains of disadvantages that may be important for mitigating social inequalities in mental health across generations.