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About 13,000 physicians from the former Soviet Union have found themselves in the saturated medical market in Israel as a result of the latest wave of immigration. This paper examines the gap in professional altitudes and practices between Israeli and Soviet MDs and the cognitive mechanisms employed by immigrant physicians in the process of adjustment to the new medical culture. The study draws on 25 semistructured interviews with recent (about three years in Israel) immigrant doctors who were at various stages of obtaining a local medical license. Reflecting on the need to redefine themselves as professionals and to confront negative stereotypes regarding ex-Soviet doctors, many respondents stressed the strong sides of Soviet medical training and work style. In their collective self-portrait, immigrant doctors emphasized devotion to patients, clinical intuition, manual skills, and empathy, while flaws were regarded as superficial and improvable by technical training. Conversely, the alleged flaws of Israeli doctors were perceived by these informants as pertaining to the core of medicine: "Excessive dependence on technology," "lack of responsibility toward patients," and "weak preventive orientation" of Israeli colleagues were repeatedly criticized. The paper sheds light on the significant conceptual differences between the Soviet and Western medical traditions and provides a vivid example of the sociocultural construction of medicine. Our findings are also indicative of the interpretative processes and coping strategies that immigrants in general may develop in saturated professional markets. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how multiple roles affect the mental health of the elderly in Japan and the United States, two countries with vastly different cultures. Hypotheses were drawn based on the cultural differences in role experiences, and these hypotheses are tested by analyzing nationally representative samples of the elderly in these countries. The results show that Americans are more likely to be involved in roles related to family, work, and community, while the Japanese are more likely to be involved in only those roles related to family and work. Multiple roles are also found to be less beneficialfor the mental health of Japanese elderly compared to American counterparts. National differences in the effects of individual roles and role configurations on mental health are also documented. Overall, the results show the importance of broad cultural contexts for understanding the relationship between roles and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When women who entered a neurology service, but who were discharged with psychiatric diagnoses, were compared with women entering a psychiatric service of the same hospital, the former women were found to come from sub-cultures not having psychiatric vocabularies of motives. They were less educated, more rural in both birthplace and present residence, of lower socio-economic status, and less likely to be Jewish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, I examine how parents' cultural knowledge shapes experiences navigating the healthcare system after a child is diagnosed with cancer and the extent to which differential styles of health-related advocacy contribute to inequalities in healthcare experiences. I combine data from parents' perspectives, physicians' perspectives, and direct observation of clinical interactions and find three overarching styles of health-related advocacy. Findings show that cultural dispositions and competencies shape parents' abilities to effectively navigate the healthcare system, and physicians differentially reward each style of health-related advocacy. Parents' styles of advocacy shape relationships with clinicians, physicians' perceptions of families, and physicians' strategies for interacting with families. These findings refine understanding of the mechanisms through which social class manifests in clinical interactions, shapes patient-physician relationships, and contributes to unequal healthcare experiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The metaphor vintage wine in new bottles imagines how ideas from immigration studies, social psychology, and cultural sociology add novel insights about how the social context and social relationships of immigrant lives are linked to well-being. This article describes a few patterns in research studies that have addressed whether immigrants have higher or lower rates of mental health problems than their U.S.-born counterparts. It discusses a few past approaches to explain the differences in mental health outcomes. The article concludes with select concepts and tools from other sociological fields that may invigorate research on immigrants and their health and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiological research typically focuses on the intensity, frequency, or duration of physical activity, without consideration of the socially meaningful dimensions of exercise. The authors use data from the 1998 National Health Interview Survey (N = 17,455) and information on participation in 15 exercise behaviors to examine educational differences in exercise among non-Hispanic whites, non-Hispanic blacks, and Mexican Americans. Factor analysis identifies three types of exercise: team sports (e.g., basketball, football), fitness activities (e.g., running, weight lifting), and activities that require the use of specialized facilities (e.g., golf, tennis). Cultural capital and human capital perspectives offer insight into different dimensions of the relationship between education and exercise. Whites disproportionately undertake facility-based exercise, blacks tend toward team and fitness activities, and Mexican Americans gravitate toward team sports. Our findings offer insight into the social stratification of health and can aid the design of public health interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Though often conflated, informal physical exercise and organized athletic participation have very different implications for adolescent sexual risk outcomes. The purpose of this research is to disaggregate strenuous exercise from sports, examine how each is associated with sexual risk, and explain the observed differences using the conceptual lens of cultural resource theory. Using a nationally representative sample of over 16,000 public and private high school students, we employ logistic regression to test hypotheses about the gender-specific and race-specific effects of strenuous exercise and athletic participation on adolescent sexual risk behavior. The results show that both forms of physical activity buffer sexual risk for girls. Strenuous exercise is associated with increased odds of sexual risk for boys. Sports and race interact to influence boys' sexual risk outcomes: Athletic participation is associated with lowered odds of sexual risk for white male adolescents, but heightened odds of sexual risk for black male adolescents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

American Indian adults are thought to experience significant depressive symptoms at rates several times higher than adults in the general population, yet we know very little about factors associated with depressive symptoms among this under studied group. Many researchers have argued that depressive symptoms are associated with conflicts between American Indian traditional cultural values, practices, and beliefs and those of the majority culture. This report, based on a sample 287 American Indian adults from the upper Midwest, takes into account two measures of cultural effects: perceived discrimination, as one indicator of culture conflict, and traditional practices, as a measure of cultural identification. The results indicate that discrimination is strongly associated with depressive symptoms among American Indian adults and that engaging in traditional practices is negatively related to depressive symptoms. Moreover, interaction effects between perceived discrimination and traditional practices indicate that engaging in traditional practices buffers the negative effects of discrimination among those who regularly participate in them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Belief in external control is a socially transmitted conception of reality that characterizes some populations more than others and has consequences for the emotional quality of life. Studies of the relationship between cognitive orientations and psychological well-being find that belief in external control is associated with distress, and cross-cultural studies of cognitive orientations find that Mexicans and Mexican Americans are more likely than Anglos to believe in external control. As a result, we would expect that persons of Mexican heritage are more distressed than Anglos. However, community mental health surveys find either no differences in distress between Mexicans and Anglos or that Mexicans are less distressed. We explain this apparent inconsistency. Mexican culture has contradictory effects of the two major forms of distress. Mexican heritage increases depression because of its association with belief in external control, but it decreases anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explains the emergence, growth, and institutional anchoring of bioethics in both policy and clinical arenas. Under the heading of principlism, bioethics developed a public language for resolving disputes that allowed it to transform disputes involving sacred matters into profane work routines. At the same time, having principlism as a common language for solving practical disputes allowed “ethics work” in health care to be separated from moral theorizing as a practical activity. Two issues—the right to die and the protection of research subjects—serve to illustrate the process through which bioethics established a large institutional footprint in health care. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]