Fig. 3
The proposed casual diagram with possible temporal orders and the summarized mediated proportion of four hypothesized pathways from the sequential mediation analyses. * The selected mediators for each hypothesized pathway were Townsend Deprivation Index for suboptimal SES, self-rated mental problem for psychological morbidities, body mass index for unfavorable lifestyle, and high-density lipoprotein for biological alternations in the cohorts for mediation analyses of any endocrine diseases and type 2 diabetes, as well as employment, self-rated mental problem, alcohol and triglycerides in the cohort for mediation analyses of HPA-axis-related endocrine diseases, according to the results of simple mediation analyses