Search

The first part of this paper is a response to several recent critiques of labelling theory. The second part assesses the State of the evidence on the labelling theory of mental illness. The majority of the studies reviewed support the theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article is in response to comments by the author G. Harvey on the research paper "Response Biases in Field Studies of Mental Illness." Most of his criticisms, however, concern issues which authors raised in an earlier draft of the paper and in more recent work. The study under scrutiny here was the first of a series of investigations authors have been conducting to explore bias and invalidity in survey research. It is important to note that the paper was not intended to answer all questions concerning response biases. Rather the purpose was to extend the work of author Bruce P. Dohrenwend, who in his provocative 1966 American Sociological Review article raised the spectre of response biases in field studies of psychiatric disorder. Harvey is incorrect when he claims that authors have taken the a priori position that association means error. A closer inspection of the paper will reveal that it was concerned with testing the two hypotheses outlined by Dohrenwend regarding the correlation between "social desirability" and symptom scores.

According to the psychiatric perspective, social and economic resources facilitate tile disturbed individual's entrance into psychiatric treatment In contrast, the societal reaction perspective views resources as enabling the individual to avoid being channelled into the role of the men tally ill. This paper examines the role social arid economic resources play in mental hospitalization, comparing the societal reaction and psychiatric perspectives. The information contained in the literature, as well as data obtained from 258 state hospital patients, indicates that the psychiatric perspective comes closer than the societal reaction perspective to describing what typically occurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In an effort to contribute to an empirically based "sociology of knowledge application," this paper explores the frames of reference that decision-makers employ in assessing the usefulness of social science research for their work Analysis of responses of 155 decision makers in mental health fields to 50 actual research reports reveals five frames of reference: relevance of research topic, research quality, conformity of results with expectations, orientation to action, and challenge to existing policy. All frames are positively associated with perceived likelihood of using a study. Two significant interactions among the frames suggest that, in essence, decision-makers apply a "truth test" and a "utility test" in screening social science research. They judge truth on two bases: research, quality and/or conformity with prior knowledge and expectations. They also assess utility on alternaive bases. feasible direction for action and/or challenge to current policy. The Ways in which they apply research conclusions to their work is a broader, more diffuse, and wider-ranging process than many earlier investigators have recognized. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

The article presents the author's comments on the research paper "Possible Causes of the Apparent Sex Differences in Physical Health," by Walter R. Gove and Michael Hughes. It is the position of Gove and Hughes that higher rates of morbidity among women, as compared with men, result from a higher prevalence of "mild forms of physical illness," and that this results from poorer mental health and demands of a nurturant role. Although Gove and Hughes purport to address the issue of mild physical differences, the choice of their dependent variables is inappropriate for this task. The measures used were a rating of "overall health" and an index of whether or not during the past two weeks the respondents did not perform various activities because they were not feeling well. Gove and Hughes attempt to justify the illness response and behavior measures they use as proxies for physical illness. But overall health ratings are general indications of well-being, known to be correlated not only with physical illness of all types but also with psychological well-being, functional incapacity, and community participation.

This paper is concerned with the question of response biases in field studies of menial illness. Following a discussion of the possible influence of two response biases which may affect the validity of social science measures-social desirability and acquiescence-the results of a pilot study concerning a psychiatric inventory used by several investigators are presented. Analysis of data from this study reveals that people's evaluation as to the "social desirability" of the inventory items is related both to their position in the status hierarchy and to their reports as to whether or not they have experienced the various symptoms constituting the psychiatric inventory. Thus, the relationship between socioeconomic position and mental health is affected by people's evaluations as to the desirability of mental health inventory items. However, the findings also confirm that the existence of a relationship between socioeconomic position and disorder is not just a result of the hypothesized distortions arising from a response bias. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with testing the hypothesis that women will report more psychiatric symptoms than will men with an equal number of physical illnesses. Our hypothesis arises from an assessment of the societal definitions of what is "appropriate" or "inappropriate" behavior for someone occupying the status of male or female. In our view, men are expected to be less expressive than women in their emotional behavior. Analysis of data collected from a sample of 278 adults in 1965 and 1966 provides strong support for the hypothesis. On two indices consisting of what are judged to be psychological and psychophysiological symptoms, a greater percentage of women than men have "high" scores. Two other indices, containing physiological and ambiguous items, show a tendency for men to have slightly higher scores. Since the first two indices contain 15 items and the other two only 7, not unexpectedly women are higher than men on the over-all mental health inventory. This pattern is revealed in the analysis of data for both 1965 and 1966, and is also shown in analysis of "turnover" during the one-year period. A further finding is that women are more likely to seek medical care than are men with the same number of physical illnesses and similar psychiatric symptoms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research paper focuses on an attempt to validate a measure of mental health. The subject of the investigation is a scale included in a study of mental health in an urban area of southwest Michigan. The twenty-two questions used in the scale had been designed to assess the mental health of respondents in the New York Midtown study. Responses to these questions had correlated with the mental health ratings given by the Midtown study psychiatrists. One of the aims of the present study was to appraise the concurrent validity of a mental health scale derived from the questions used in the Midtown study. The scale was based upon a simple addition of the number of questions that were answered positively by the respondent. A summary score of "0" represented best mental health while higher scores were indicative of progressively poorer mental health. This scale will be referred to as the 22 Item Mental Health (MH) Scale. Two main techniques were used to evaluate validity. The first was the known groups procedure, in which the questions were administered to samples drawn from populations whose mental health was known or might be estimated. The second was the independent criteria method, in which other measures of mental health were compared with the results obtained from the 22 Item MH Scale.

This paper attempts to examine the decision-making process in a small, institute type of psychiatric hospital in terms of the differences in real, perceived, and ideal influence patterns of 53 mental health specialists. It was hypothesized that these decision-making patterns would reflect the influence of a dual criteria system with respect to the organization and functioning of the hospital. These criteria are, first, the traditional medical bureaucracy and, second, the currently emphasized "team" or equalitarian approach regarding the care and treatment of patients. Under investigation were the nature and implications of this organizational dualism for both the involvement of staff members in the on going decision-making process and their evaluations of this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A small part of the juvenile delinquent population has been treated clinically since the establishment of the multi-disciplinary approach to children's behavior problems at Chicago, Illinois, in 1909. The special working relationship between psychiatry and criminology effected at that time soon was duplicated in courts and clinics in many cities. Ultimate goals of these courts and clinics were defined as the prevention of crime by appropriate treatment of juvenile delinquents. This paper reports on an evaluative study of one such court-affiliated clinic, the Wayne County Clinic for Child Study, in Detroit, Michigan. It is not pertinent here to recount the various treatment methods utilized during the past 40 years. Viewpoints relative to the etiology of delinquent behavior dictated therapeutic trends. Etiological theories of psychiatrists generally emphasized that delinquent behavior is a symptom with psychological roots. For example, in psychoanalytic theory, the most dominant position found in many clinics, delinquency is viewed as the acting out of an unconscious mental conflict formed by the impact of certain actions and events occurring within the family upon the biological strivings for libidinal satisfactions.

Prior to passage of the National Mental Health Act in 1946 there existed, within the U.S. Public Health Service, a Division of Mental Hygiene whose responsibility was largely confined to research on narcotic addiction and to administration of the two U.S. Public Health Service Hospitals at Lexington, Kentucky and Fort Worth, Texas, which are primarily concerned with treatment and care of narcotic addicts. Although on paper the Division had some responsibility for research into nervous and mental diseases, the research program was never really implemented by an adequate allotment of funds. The act of 1946 constituted a declaration of intent to provide funds for a broad program of research, training and aid to States for the development of means of dealing with mental health problem. A brief review of the evidence presented and the individuals and groups participating in Congressional hearings which resulted in the final formulation of the Act reveals at least four forces which helped to convince the Congress that action in this field on the part of the federal government was imperative.

The article comments on the research paper "Response Biases in Field Studies of Mental Illness," by Derek L. Phillips and Kevin J. Clancy. Authors suggest that two forms of response bias, social desirability responding and naysaying, gravely distort scores on the mental health inventory. They suggest that such distortions may be nonrandomly distributed across levels of SES, and thus explain numerous findings of negative correlations between social class and mental illness. Authors do not clearly define "response set" or the general range of implications they might draw from correlations between mental health and response set indicators. Rather, a priori position is taken that association means error. Authors apply their social desirability index to a problem which it cannot resolve, that of estimating bias in actual responses. Researchers conducting field studies of mental health, or other surveys, recognize that certain precautions will greatly reduce response error. Response error is also reduced by strong interviewer-respondent rapport.

The article presents the author's response to the comments made by sociologists H. Warren Dunham and David Mechanic, to his article "Societal Reactions As an Explanation of Mental Illness," published in the October 1970 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." According to the author, while he feel the societal reaction explanation of mental illness is largely incorrect, he is in agreement with Dunham that the social expectations of others are important in determining behavior, including deviant behavior. Moreover, according to the author, regarding Mechanic's comments, he would like to note that he does not consider patient flow as static, and he doubts that anyone familiar with the recent history of psychiatric hospitalization would. Probably the most drastic change in patient flow has been the recent increase in the admission rates that has been associated with the marked improvements in psychiatric treatment. According to the author, Mechanic's clarification indirectly gives further support for his position that the societal reaction perspective does not provide an adequate general explanation of mental illness.

Traditional psychiatry for a long time emphasized clinical description. It was Kraepelin who first insisted that a patient's thoughts, so long as they remained abnormal, were of interest only for purposes of diagnosis. Undoubtedly, the description of symptoms facilitating diagnosis is important. The classification of the American Psychiatric Association contains twenty-two broad categories of mental disorder. These categories subsumes some eighty sub-varieties. Because this classification is based on an overlapping symptomatology, it will probably be revised in the next few years; but a classificatory system of some kind will always constitute the essence of clinical procedure. Besides nosological descriptions, we must have knowledge of environmental pressures affecting abnormal behavior. We must know more about the role of factors that come within the range of human ecology, dealing with the adjustments of groups and communities to their various habitats; cultural anthropology, dealing with the adjustments of individuals to the cultures of their groups; and social psychology, dealing with inter-individual adjustments, or the responses of individuals to social situations. Knowing the range of clinical variation, and the role of these factors in abnormal behavior, we can discover the environmental settings linked up with the appearance of the various clinical entities.

The Manpower Research Branch of the Air Force Personnel and Training Research Center, Montgomery, Alabama, hosted a conference on Air Force manpower problems from March 23, 1955 to March 25, 1955. Participating consultants were Frank G. Dickinson of the American Medical Association; Rupert B. Vance from the University of North Carolina; and Lloyd G. Humphreys from Lackland Air Force Base. Child Study Association of America has appointed Orville G. Brim from the University of Wisconsin, to conduct a three-year study of the relationship between social science and parent education. Trustees of the Ford Foundation have allocated $15 million to strengthen and extend research in mental health. In initial stages of the program, applications will be entertained to support work several research areas including social and community aspects of mental health; children's disorders; biological, physiological and somatic problems in mental illness; personality development and functioning; and studies in therapy.

Despite the profound impact Durkheim’s Suicide has had on the social sciences, several enduring issues limit the utility of his insights. With this study, we offer a new Durkheimian framework for understanding suicide that addresses these problems. We seek to understand how high levels of integration and regulation may shape suicide in modern societies. We draw on an in-depth, qualitative case study (N = 110) of a cohesive community with a serious adolescent suicide problem to demonstrate the utility of our approach. Our case study illustrates how the lives of adolescents in this highly integrated community are intensely regulated by the local culture, which emphasizes academic achievement. Additionally, the town’s cohesive social networks facilitate the spread of information, amplify the visibility of actions and attitudes, and increase the potential for swift sanctions. This combination of cultural and structural factors generates intense emotional reactions to the prospect of failure among adolescents and an unwillingness to seek psychological help for adolescents’ mental health problems among both parents and youth. Ultimately, this case illustrates (1) how high levels of integration and regulation within a social group can render individuals vulnerable to suicide and (2) how sociological research can provide meaningful and unique insights into suicide prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The integration of temporal life course perspectives and current social context perspectives is considered as a framework for the understanding of mental health differences in early adulthood, a formative stage in the development of long-term mental health differences. Using data from the National Survey of Children and a cross-nested random effects model to simultaneously assess the effects of current and past neighborhood, the authors find a lagged effect of childhood neighborhood socioeconomic disadvantage on early adult mental health, while accounting for initial mental health status. This lagged effect also explains the apparent (bivariate) effect of current neighborhood. Four hypotheses are assessed to explain the lagged effect of neighborhood: contextual continuity, mental health continuity, life course stress accumulation, and ambient chronic stress in the neighborhood. Support is found for a cumulative mediating effect of both life course stress and ambient neighborhood stress as children grow up; together, these variables entirely explain the lagged effect of early neighborhood. Findings suggest the need for a more temporal life course approach to the specification of social context effects in general, focusing on the history of social contexts that individuals live in and move through. Temporal-contextual perspectives also encourage a focus on theoretical models that can differentially locate formative contextual influences at different stages in the life course. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite much speculation in classical sociological theory, urbanization and industrialization are not systematically related to individual mental health. The "interpersonal environment" mediates between larger system properties and individual realities. Two kinds of interpersonal environments are noted in classical theory: a gemeinschaft environment of high social density, and an overlapping specialized social circle environment. Using stress reactions (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) of Vietnam veterans to combat as an example, it was found that social density predicts lower levels of stress reaction only in smaller cities and rural areas, whereas interaction with a circle of Vietnam veterans is associated with reduced distress in cosmopolitan metropolitan areas and with increased stress reactions in medium sized cities and rural areas. Because combat is exogenous to the men's current urban setting, the findings are less likely to be confounded by "drift" and self-selection. Implications for classical urban theory are developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Work is believed to be important for the mental health of men and women. With limited empirical support, social scientists have argued that employment is important as both an income source and a source of "extraeconomic" benefits as well. The latter include social status, an interpersonal context, and psychologically rewarding activities. Although jobs in the middle and upper status range appear to be obvious sources of extraeconomic benefits, this is less apparent at the lower margins where jobs are less socially desirable. The analyses described here examine the economic and extraeconomic benefits of employment among one portion of the marginal labor force-ex-felons. Drawing on data from TARP, a field experiment involving about 2000 arc-felons released in Texas and Georgia in 1976, a nonrecursive model of the functions of employment was formulated and tested. Using three-stage least squares, employment was found to reduce affective distress among ex-felons by providing both income support and extraeconomic benefits. Furthermore, there were some feedback effects in that affective stress was found to reduce subsequent work activity, further aggravating feelings of displacement and stigmatization among unemployed ex-felons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence from a large national survey indicates a significant positive relationship between spouses employment and psychological distress among married men in this country. Employment outside the home is associated with improved mental health among married women. Investigating the determinants of these effects shows that the mental health advantage of employment for women is due to objective changes in their life situations as they move out of the home and into the labor force. We have a less clear understanding of the relationship between spouse's employment and psychological distress among men, but inferential evidence suggests that traditional sex role orientations explain part of this effect. There is no evidence that objective burdens associated with increased housework or childcare responsibilities play a part in the elevated rates of distress reported by husbands. These conclusions are brought together in a discussion of trends in the relationship between sex and psychological distress. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the authors reply back to scholars Alan Booth, David R. Johnson and John N. Edwards regarding household crowding. Booth and colleagues state that lack of privacy and over-stimulation by social demands should be conceptually and analytically distinct from the measures of social pathology. The various pathological domains discussed in article, mental health, social relations in the home, physical health and child care, are all related domains. Mental health affects social relationships, physical health and child care. Similarly, social relations, physical health and disruptive children all affect mental health. Comparable relationships occur with the other domains. At the same time, the various components of the domains are analytically distinct and empirically distinguishable. In short, for a properly specified model, the need, at least initially, is to include a large number of measures of mental health, social relationships, physical health and child care. In constructing the initial path model within each domain, each dependent variable should be presented as involved in a complex network of causal relations with each of the others.

The article focuses on the effects of household crowding in urban areas. Among the pathological consequences catalogued by the authors are poor mental health, withdrawal, a lack of effective planning, deteriorated physical well-being, poor familial relations and child care. Not incidentally, the number of people in the household has conceptual and analytical implications for the lack of privacy and demands, the two other independent variables. As the number of people increases arithmetically, the complexity of interaction increases as an exponential function. Hence, the degree to which number of people is related to the experiential variables is an important consideration. Unfortunately, the analysis is presented in a way that does not permit us to evaluate the relations between the experiential variables and the components of people-per-room. Curiously, after demonstrating that people-per-room is highly correlated with number of people in the household, the authors do not control for number of people in their analysis. Perhaps the findings would have been very different had they done so.

Several recent studies have suggested that, contrary to investigators' initial expectations, household crowding typically has little impact on humans. Using a sample collected in Chicago which minimized the collinearity between crowding and socioeconomic variables, we find that both objective crowding (as measured by persons per room) and subjective crowding (as indicated by (1) excessive social demands and (2) a lack of privacy) are strongly related to poor mental health, poor social relationships in the home and poor child care; and are less strongly, but significantly related to poor physical health, and to poor social relationships outside the home. Furthermore, these three crowding variables taken together, on the avenge, uniquely explain as much (and with many indicators, more) variance in our dependent variables as is uniquely explained by the combined effects of sex, race, education, income, age, and marital status. It is suggested that attention be turned away from the question of whether crowding ever has effects to the study of factors which maximize or minimize its effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emotional stresses that are experienced In marriage are traced to difference: in spouses' status origins, Linking status differences to such stress are a number of Intervening conditions. People to whom status advancement is important and who have married mates of lower status are apt to have a sense of loss that leads, us turn, to a disruption of reciprocity, expressiveness, affection and value sharing In marital exchange. Such disruptions then act as immediate antecedents to emotional stress. It is through this process that the status order of the larger society can reach out to have a deleterious influence on the emotional states arising out of marital transactions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poor children experience greater psychological distress than do nonpoor children. However, evidence for the relationship between poverty and children's distress is limited by the use of measures of poverty at a single point in time, by a failure to examine race or ethnic differences, and by a lack of concern with explanations for poverty's effects. Using data from the 1986 Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth (NLSY) data set, we explored the relationships among current poverty, length of time spent in poverty, maternal parenting behaviors, and children's mental health. Persistent poverty significantly predicts children's internalizing symptoms above and beyond the effect of current poverty, whereas only current poverty predicts externalizing symptoms. Mother's weak emotional responsiveness and frequent use of physical punishment explain the effect of current poverty on mental health, but not the effect of persistent poverty. The relationships among poverty, parenting behaviors, and children's mental health do not vary by race/ethnicity. These findings support theoretical developments calling for greater emphasis on family processes in studies of children's poverty. They also argue for greater attention to trajectories of socioeconomic status in analyses of the effects of status on mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article distinguishes between sociological models that focus on the mental health consequences of patterns of social organization and sociomedical models that emphasize the social antecedents of mental disorders. These two orientations may appear identical or complementary and are often interchanged, but this similarity is illusory and deceptive. Sociological and sociomedical models both incorporate social characteristics, stress, and psychological dysfunction but differ in their conceptualizations of the relationships among these constructs. Disorder-specific models substantially misrepresent social group differences in the mental health consequences of exposure to stress whenever the impact of stress differs across groups for various disorders. A focus on overall psychological disorder may obscure important group differences in the impact of stress on specific disorders. At issue here is the nature of the question being addressed. Neither disorder-specific nor general approaches to mental health are inherently correct.

Research on the impact of suicide stories in the media on imitative suicides has been marked by poor theory and undifferentiated indexes. This study focuses on celebrity suicides. It uses a taxonomy of celebrities based on Tarde's laws of imitation and Pareto's concept of elite. Propositions are drawn from differential identification theory, using mass cultural values and beliefs as points of identification. The imitation effect holds only for American entertainers and political celebrities, not for artists, villains, and the economic elite. The amount of publicity given to suicides was positively related to the monthly incidence of suicide, but problems common to the celebrities and the suicidal population (divorce, physical illness, and poor mental health) were not. An interactive model in which the impact of a suicide story is mediated by the suicidogenic mood of the media audience did not improve on the simple additive model. Age, gender, and race-specific suicide rates tended to support identification theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Review of research on social class and mental illness suggests the hypothesis of two patterns: (1) a discrete relationship with the lowest class having a higher rate than all others but with little difference in rates for other classes; (2) a continuous relationship, with rates systematically increasing with each drop in class status, but with an extremely large increase for the lowest class. Findings for 4,650 Washington male first admissions between 1954 and 1965 support this hypothesis. Alternative interpretations of the relationship between social class and mental illness are considered. Since most interpretations posit a discrete pattern, they will have to be modified or extended to account for both patterns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Studies of the prevalence of mental illness in various communities have produced extremely divergent results. For example, one recent summary of 11 community surveys revealed rates ranging from 16.7 to 333.0 per 1,000 persons. Whether this variation represents actual differences in community prevalence or is the result of differences in research design remains a largely a unresolved question? Reliance upon psychiatric diagnosis has by no means resolved the problem of case definition. Despite the appearance of a standardized nomenclature over a decade ago, current variability in psychiatric diagnosis has been well documented. Such discrepancies manifestly influence the reported rates of mental illness. The patient census also omits the unknown numbers of the mentally ill who do not come to the attention of professional treatment agencies and personnel. That these numbers may greatly exceed the treated population is a conclusion of recent studies using probability samples of community residents.

The article presents information on meetings related to social development in the U.S. The Inter-American Conference on Research and Training in Sociology, a three-day conference, August 27 to 29, 1960 was held at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, California. The Bay Area Forum for Social Science Studies in the Health Fields was organized in March, 1961 to provide a common meeting point and discussion platform for social scientists engaged in applied, theoretical and experimental research in the health fields. A series of informal monthly meetings is planned in which guest speakers will discuss their work with fellow sociologists, anthropologists and others interested in this area. The National Institute of Mental Health is making available, under the Mental Health Small Research Grant Program, grants up to a maximum of 3,500 dollars plus indirect costs to encourage the initiation of research in the social and medical sciences relevant to mental health.

Among relatives of formerly hospitalized patients, attitudes toward the etiology of mental illness, the mental hospital, the normaley of former patients, and the responsibility of patients for their condition were assessed by means of short, structured scales. These attitudes were found to be associated with education, age, and verbal ability. There was no relationship, however, between these attitudes and social class, independent of education. The analysis suggests that "enlightened" attitudes toward mental illness can be more parsimoniously accounted for on the basis of differential verbal skills than on the basis of differences in "style of life." Attitudes of relatives were also found to be associated with the post hospital behavior of the patients. Difficulty may be anticipated in implementing procedures to modify the attitudes of patients' family members, for their attitudes appear to be "rooted" in a set of diverse elements that includes socialization as well as situational variables. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the issue of social mobility and mental illness. Vertical mobility has been shown to be a factor of significance in both schizophrenia and psychoneurosis, in the representative samples of two classes of the New Haven population. This does not necessarily mean that mobility is the only or even the principal, causative factor. Nor is there any information here concerning how this factor may contribute to mental abnormality. It seems clear, however, that relations between status striving, anxiety and mental health, deserve further intensive investigation. The idea that an individual's movement in the social structure is associated with the development of psychiatric difficulties has been expressed both by psychiatrists and sociologists. Some empirical research has been done on the question but psychiatrists and sociologists have not worked together previously to determine whether psychiatric patients are more or less mobile socially than comparable non-patients.

The article presents information on changes related to mental illness and its treatment. It concentrates on the areas of mental illness and personal maladjustment. It focuses on whether folk beliefs concerning causes of mental disorder, folk attitudes toward the victims of disorder, and folk prescriptions for treatment give way to concepts and attitudes based on modern science. It analyzes changes that are taking place in generations of people and the conclusions be drawn by sociologists, social workers, and psychiatrists. It is concluded that the public have become more open to accepting modern and scientific viewpoints about mental illness. It is stated that the psychiatrist is being considered by the public as a logical person to handle cases of mental disorder.

Two years spent in editing Emile Durkheim's famous study, "Le Suicide," and translating it with the collaboration of John A. Spaulding, have led the author to seek to reconsider, in the light of the knowledge amassed in the last half-century, particularly in psychoanalytic psychiatry, how one can discover more about this tantalizing phenomenon. At the outset, the author disowns any claim to having solved the problem, and any cocksureness which may appear in the presentation here should be considered a sign of author's enthusiasm for trying to solve it and not a belief in the definitiveness of my statement. Since Durkheim's work in suicide, the chief advances in the knowledge of the subject have come from actuarial and vital statistics, and psychoanalytic psychiatry. The actuarialists have studied the over-all extent and trends of suicide, related it to race and color incidence, age and sex distribution, urban and rural areas, seasonality, economic conditions, religious affiliation, marital status. This type of approach is seen in Louis I. Dublin's and Bessie Bunzel's book "To Be or Not to Be."

The relationship between alienation and mental health is of interest to workers in mental health professions for another reason. This is the question of whether social values are affected by mental illness. It has often been assumed that they are, but there is a dearth of evidence on this question. It cannot be taken for granted that because a man enters a mental hospital, he has rejected the values of the dominant culture. On the basis of research on long stay patients, it appears more likely that large mental hospitals produce more alienation than they treat. Some patients on chronic wards have not visited a community in years. Many do not read a newspaper or receive mail. In such cases discussions of alienated mental patients should be centered on the disculturating effects of large isolated mental hospitals rather than the relationship between alienation and psychopathology. The task at hand is to investigate the degree of alienation of patients recently admitted to a large mental hospital.

The article presents the author's comment on an article "Societal Reaction As an Explanation of Mental Illness: An Evaluation," by Walter R. Gove, published in the October, 1970 issue of the journal "American Sociological Review." According to the author, Gove neatly documents the inability of societal reaction theory to explain mental illness with its primary emphasis on secondary deviation, as well as the inability of this theory to cope with the consequences of hospitalization, especially in the new climate of hospital treatment for mental illness. However, because the societal reaction theorists in attempting to explain mental illness have fallen into an untenable position, it does not necessarily follow "that a person's behavior determines the expectations of others to a much greater degree than the reverse." Moreover, according to the author, if a person's status, wealth and/or in personality are strong enough, he may successfully ward off any societal reactions which attempt to define for him a role of secondary deviance.

The article presents the author's reply to comments by researchers van den Haag and James W. Rinehart on an article by her and her colleagues. Each critic focuses upon a different concern, researcher van den Haag's general endorsement of our work puts us in a most receptive mood and we are quite willing to concede his point, which is a good one. We certainly recognize the justification of calling to our attention that by such indices as education for aspiration and occupation for achievement, one cannot determine the psychological state of a normal person and much less that of a schizophrenic. Even though, as he states, "pre schizophrenics probably have reduced, unfocused and unlinked reality aspirations," we were merely falling into a prevailing sociological convention in making the inference. However, such inferences are frequently made in the sociological field, all we intended to say was that if such a convention is accepted, a potential schizophrenic, in his development, probably experiences a certain amount of frustration like other persons who do not develop schizophrenia.

No formal relationships between the National Association of Social Workers (NASW) and the American Sociological Association required attention during the past year. A number of NASW activities of interest to sociologists can be reported. Prior decisions with respect to the structure of NASW were put into effect as of January 1964. Three divisions were established — Division of Practice and Knowledge, Division of Social Policy and Action and Division of Professional Standards. The Division of Practice and Knowledge, in turn, is composed of nine councils representative of areas of professional activity which include Social Work in the Schools, Social Work in Medical and Health Services, Social Work in Mental Health and Psychiatric Services, Social Work in Correctional Services, Social Work in Family and Children's Services, Social Work in Group Services, Social Work in Community Planning and Development, Social Work Research and Social Work Administration. Elected chairman of this major Division was Alfred J. Kahn of Columbia University and a fellow in the American Sociological Association.

The article presents the author's response to the comments made by Walter R. Gove to his article on mental illness. According to the author, Gove refers to observations the author made on the defnitionaI process at two public California institutions in 1958-59. Most admissions during that period were involuntary, and his observations refer primarily to such patients. Moreover, according to the author his article dealt with the screening process, and his point was that what- ever serious screening took place occurred before hospital admission. The purpose of his article was to explain the contingencies under which the screening process varied. According to the author, some of the contingencies affecting the treatment process have changed in recent years, and hopefully they will continue to change further. To treat such processes as patient flow as static and independent of institutional influences is to miss a key sociological issue.