Discusses why poor people are more likely to suffer from
psychiatric disorders. Those of low socioeconomic status experience more
stress and adversity; Drift downward of the vulnerable; Results of a
study of the illness; Columbia University psychologist Bruce P.
Dohrenwend.
By
PT Staff, published on July 01, 1992
If, as Fitzgerald claimed, the rich are different, so are the poor.
They aremore likely to suffer from psychiatric disorders.
Is it because those of low socioeconomic status experience more
stress and adversity--the so-called theory of social causation? Or,
rather, is there a drift downward of the vulnerable, as the theory of
social selection holds?
Both, says a new study, which finds N depends on the illness.
Schizophrenia can drag even privileged people down. But the stress of
poverty compounded by the adversity of racial prejudice plays out in
disorders such as depression in women, and antisocial personality and
substance abuse in men.
The findings raise questions whether people react to adversity in
gender specific ways, and suggest a reason why poverty today seems not to
respond to traditional remedies the poor may be a psychological
underclass as well as an economic one.
To pry apart the sorting process, Columbia University psychologist
Bruce P. Dohrenwend, Ph.D., looked at ethnic status in relation to
socioeconomic status. Like socioeconomic status, ethnic status influences
job chances. But ethnic status is set by immutable characteristics such
as skin color and nationality. It is not affected by mental disorder.
That fed him to a group of people suffering harsh eracial
discrimination--Israelis of North African descent, compared with those of
European descent.
The incidence of schizophrenia was greater among the European
Israelis, confirming social selection at work, he reports in Science
(Vol. 255). These results square with findings from such other sources as
twin and adoption studies.
Depression, by contrast, was higher among North African females,
and directly related to educational level. Personality disorder turned up
most among North African men, as did substance abuse and both are all bat
absent among college graduates. The greater the adversity, the more
psychopathology.
Concludes Dohrenwend: "Adversity in the sense of misfortune is a
cause of substance abuse and antisocial personality in men and depressing
in women."
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