Fig 1.
Causal diagram of hypothesized pathways between school absence (Ab) and child mental health (MH) at ages 7, 11 and 14 years.
Figure shows a directed acyclic graph (DAG) of hypothesized pathways between school absence (Ab) and child mental health (MH) at ages 7, 11 and 14 years. Ab: school absence in 2 years prior to MH measurement (i.e., 6&7 years, 9&10 years, 12&13 years). MH: high scorer on SDQ at 7, 11 and 14 years. C: baseline confounders: measured before children started school: sex, ethnicity and deprivation. Note that C baseline confounders were included in each of the models, including for Ab9&10 and Ab12&13 however only a single arrow is shown in Fig 1 for simplicity and as C confounders were only included once in lagged models. T: time varying confounders: maternal mental health, long-term condition, previous educational attainments, engagement with school, special educational needs and bullying, area-level deprivation, prior SDQ.
Table 1.
Characteristics of children in terms of school absence in preceding 2 years and mental health disorder at 7, 11 and 14 years.
Table 2.
Cohort member characteristics for confounding variables.
Table 3.
Odds ratios for probable psychological disorder at 7, 11 and 14 years associated with quartiles of preceding school absence in unlagged and lagged mediation models.
Table 4.
Supplementary analyses: odds ratios for probable psychological disorder at 7, 11 and 14 years associated with preceding school absence as a continuous or binary variable in unlagged and lagged mediation models.
Table 5.
Odds ratios for probable psychological disorder at 7, 11 and 14 years associated with preceding authorized school absence in unlagged and lagged mediation models.