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Major life changes and role transitions are often treated as stressors that create a generalized demand for adjustment by the individual. Empirically, however, these transitions have been shown to produce a wide range of effects on mental health. Two kinds of models have been proposed to explain this variation: differential access to coping resources for dealing with stressful situations, and variation in the characteristics of transitions, such as their undesirability, foreseeability, etc. This paper emphasizes a logically prior issue: the role context within which the transition event occurs, specifically, the level of pre-existing chronic stress in the social role. The model tested envisions life transition events as nonproblematic, or even beneficial to mental health, when preceded by chronic role problems -- a case where more "stress" is actually relief from existing stress. Nine transition events are studied: job loss, divorce, pre-marital break-up, retirement, widowhood, children moving out of the house, first marriage, job promotion, and having a child. Results support the hypothesis that prior role stress reduces the impact of life transition events on mental health for seven of nine events, with some differences in impact by gender. The findings provide a basic framework for interpreting the effects of varying types of life transitions, and argue against the presumption that life transitions are inherently stressful, suggesting instead a need to specify prior social circumstances that determine whether or not a transition is potentially stressful. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper hypothesizes that official labeling gives personal relevance to an individual's beliefs about how others respond to mental patients. According to this view, people develop conceptions of what others think of mental patients long before they become patients. These conceptions include the belief that others devalue and discriminate against mental patients. When people enter psychiatric treatment and are labeled, these beliefs become personally applicable and lead to self-devaluation and/or the fear of rejection by others. Such reactions may have negative effects on both psychological and social functioning. This hypothesis was tested by comparing samples of community residents and psychiatric patients from the Washington Heights section of New York city. Five groups were formed (1) first-treatment contact patients, (2) repeat-treatment contact patients, (3) formerly treated' community residents, (4) untreated community cases, and (5) community residents with no evidence of severe psychopathology. These groups were administered a scale that measured beliefs that mental patients would be devalued and discriminated against by most people. Scores on this scale were associated with demoralization, income loss, and unemployment in labeled groups but not in unlabeled groups. The results suggest that labeling may produce negative outcomes like those specified by the classic concept of secondary deviance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]