superdan

study related

[jidanzhongposts-blog]

Applying for Japanese Visa in Toronto

Everything is listed on their website:

http://www.ca.emb-japan.go.jp/canada_e/Visa/temporary.html

Tips:

1) They took only one month’s bank statement although I brought 3 months.

2) You do not need to book your flight ticket, as long as you have an itinerary.

3) Fee is only needed when picking up the passport, cash only, the fee should be just right (they would not provide change I assume)

4) the address is 77 king street west, the TD north tower (you would not be able to see the number “77″ outside of the building).

[jidanzhongposts-blog]

Creating graphs for my data (week 4)

In this task, I created the graphs of my variables regarding to their distribution, with the population focused in White (not hispanic or Latino). The major depression data included the ones having it in the last 12 months, excluded with illness or substance induced ones.  The graphs showing the association between the family history and major depression, between the alcohol dependence/abuse and major depression were generated. 

1) program

2) figures

Explanation: 

My variables  (both dependent and independent) are categorical, thus there is no need to calculate the mean and standard deviation. However, you can tell from the figure and table that over 70% of the data belong to the first categories in each variable, so all of the data spread is skewed and the median would be in the first category.

 It can be seen that over the data we have, there are less than 10% of subjects having major depression, and less than 10% of the data having alcohol dependence/abuse. From the bivariate graph we can see that, for the people with no alcohol abuse/dependence diagnosis, 7% of people have major depression. 9% of people with alcohol abuse have major depression, and 20% of people with alcohol dependence have major depression. For the people with both alcohol abuse and dependence, 24% of people have major depression. For the available dataset of family history, around 30% of people have family history of depression from their biological father/mother or both. The bivariate graph shows that in the 4 categories of people ( with no family history of depression, with father having depression, with mother having depression, with both parents having depression), the percentage of people showing depression go from 4%, 12%, 17% to 23%. It can be seen that there is a higher percentage of people with major depression for those having alcohol dependence and dependence/abuse, and those with family history major depression.  

[jidanzhongposts-blog]

Depression, Alcohol Abuse/Dependence, and Family history of Depression (week 3)

1) My FINAL Program, week 3:

LIBNAME mydata “/courses/d1406ae5ba27fe300” access=readonly; DATA new; set mydata.nesarc_pds; LABEL ALCABDEP12DX=“Alcohol abuse/dependence past 12 months”            FH="Family History with depression"                      DMAJORDEPSNIS12=“MAJOR DEPRESSION IN LAST 12 MONTHS (ILLNESS- AND SUBSTANCE-INDUCED RULED OUT)”;

ETHRACE2A="Ethnicity"

/* subsetting the data to include only past 12 months with alcohol abuse and/or dependece, with depression in last 12 months, and with either father or mother had magjor depression before (BY creating a new variable FH*/

IF ALCABDEP12DX GE 1; IF DMAJORDEPSNIS12 GT 0; IF S4BQ1 LT 2 OR S4BQ2 LT 2;

IF S4BQ1 LT 2 OR S4BQ2 GT 1 THEN FH=1; /* ONLY FATHER DEPRESSED*/ IF S4BQ2 LT 2 OR S4BQ1 GT 1 THEN FH=2; /*ONLY MOTHER DEPRESSED*/ IF S4BQ1 LT 2 AND S4BQ2 LT 2 THEN FH=3; /*BOTH DEPRESSED*/

IF ETHRACE2A LT 2; PROC SORT; by IDNUM; PROC FREQ; TABLES ALCABDEP12DX FH SEX ETHRACE2A; RUN;

2) the output

3) Compared to the program I did last week, I made a new variable called “FH” to represent family history: 1 - only father depressed; 2 - only mother depressed; 3 - both sides are depressed. I also checked the ethnicity of my subjects (table not shown). I found that of the 260 subjects from last week, 67.69% are white people (not Hispanic or Latino).  The data size is 176, which is still acceptable. Thus I decided to focus on this group of people. Then I explored sex information in my valid data. Of the total 176 subjects with major depression in the last 12 months based on my selection criteria. 10.23% subjects with only father depressed, 48.86% with only mother depressed, and 40.91% with both parents depressed.  The sex information shows that 41.48% of the subjects are males and 58.52% are females. I will include the sex information in my final model to see whether female and male show different relationship between depression and alcohol dependence/abuse independent of family history of depression.

[jidanzhongposts-blog]

Distribution of Major Depression, Alcohol Abuse/Dependence, and Family history of Depression

1) My Program, week 2:

LIBNAME mydata "/courses/d1406ae5ba27fe300" access=readonly; DATA new; set mydata.nesarc_pds; LABEL ALCABDEP12DX="Alcohol abuse/dependence past 12 months"             S4BQ2="BLOOD/NATURAL MOTHER EVER DEPRESSED, 1-Y; 2-N"             S4BQ1="BLOOD/NATURAL FATHER EVER DEPRESSED, 1-Y; 2-N"             DMAJORDEPSNIS12="MAJOR DEPRESSION IN LAST 12 MONTHS (ILLNESS- AND SUBSTANCE-INDUCED RULED OUT)"; /* subsetting the data to include only past 12 months with alcohol abuse and/or dependece, with depression in last 12 months, and with either father or mother had magjor depression before*/

IF ALCABDEP12DX GE 1; IF DMAJORDEPSNIS12 GT 0; IF S4BQ1 LT 2 OR S4BQ2 LT 2; PROC SORT; by IDNUM; PROC FREQ; TABLES ALCABDEP12DX DMAJORDEPSNIS12 S4BQ1 S4BQ2; RUN;

2) the output

3) There are in total 260 subjects with major depression in the last 12 months based on my selection criteria. 48.46% of the subjects have both alcohol abuse and dependence in the past 12 months, 34.62% shows only alcohol abuse and 16.92% shows only alcohol dependence. Either the father or the mother of the 260 subjects had depression. 51.54% fathers of the 260 subjects had depression and 89.62% mothers had depression. 12.31% of the subjects did not know whether their fathers had depression before, while only 0.77 of the subjects did not know whether there exists their mothers’ history of depression. 

[jidanzhongposts-blog]

Association between Major Depression and Alcohol Consumption

I am interested in the relationship between major depression and alcohol consumption from the NESARC database. To be safe, I will include any possible variables related in my personal codebook for now. I wonder whether people with major depression consumed more alcohol because they are depressed or because they like alcohol more than others. So family history of major depression should be involved. 

After a literature review with key word “major depression relation with alcohol consumption” on google scholar, I found useful information related to this topic. Brook et al. (2002) reported earlier alcohol use significantly predicted later major depressive disorder. 

Grant et al. (1995) found significant positive associations between alcohol dependence and major depression and  between alcohol abuse and major depression. The positive association between alcohol abuse and major depression was consistently greater for females and blacks, compared to their male and non-black counterparts.

Thus, for my question, my hypothesis is major depression would have a positive association with alcohol dependence, even if controlled with family history. My variables are major depression, alcohol consumption, and family history of major depression. I may need to separate the analysis by age, gender, and ethnicity group for more detailed relationship. 

References

Brook DW, Brook JS, Zhang C, Cohen P, Whiteman M. Drug Use and the Risk of Major Depressive Disorder, Alcohol Dependence, and Substance Use Disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2002;59(11):1039-1044. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.59.11.1039.

Bridget F. Grant, Thomas C. Harford, Comorbidity between DSM-IV alcohol use disorders and major depression: results of a national survey, Drug and Alcohol Dependence, Volume 39, Issue 3, October 1995, Pages 197-206, ISSN 0376-8716, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/0376-8716(95)01160-4.

[Hasin DS, Goodwin RD, Stinson FS, Grant BF. Epidemiology of Major Depressive Disorder: Results From the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcoholism and Related Conditions. Arch Gen Psychiatry.2005;62(10):1097-1106. doi:10.1001/archpsyc.62.10.1097.] --- This one uses exactly the same data.