(Press-News.org) Los Angeles, CA (April 9, 2012) Does the growing number of psychiatric disorder diagnoses have an effect on people with mental illnesses? According to a new study, as definitions of mental illnesses become broader, people who show signs of depression and other common mental illnesses are less likely to evoke a supportive response from friends and family members as are people with other severe mental disorders. This new study was released in a recent issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior (published by SAGE).
Author Brea L. Perry studied interviews conducted with 165 individuals with bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, major depression, and other less severe disorders, who were undergoing mental health treatment for the first time. She found that those with more socially-accepted and commonplace mental illnesses, such as depression and mild mood disorders, did not receive strong reactions to their conditions from family members, friends, or others with whom they came in contact. Brea stated that as a result, their support networks may be less willing to take on caregiver responsibilities or to excuse them when their behavior deviates from what is considered normal.
Perry wrote, "Perhaps because so many people are diagnosed and subsequently treated successfully, signs of depression do not alarm friends and family members to the same degree as disorders known to severely affect functioning."
While commonplace mental illnesses such as depression are clearly defined by professionals as legitimate medical conditions, Perry found that the public does not always deem them as justifiable grounds for taking on a "sick" role.
This study also found that diagnosing someone with a severe mental illness that is more outwardly recognizable such as schizophrenia and the manic phase of bipolar disorder can lead to a higher amount of rejection and discrimination by acquaintances and strangers while at the same time creating a stronger social support system among close friends and family.
The author wrote, "Day-to-day emotional and instrumental support is likely to play a critical role in recovery from mental illness."
INFORMATION:
The article entitled "The Labeling Paradox: Stigma, the Sick Role, and Social Networks in Mental Illness" from the Journal of Health & Social Behavior is available free for a limited time at: http://hsb.sagepub.com/content/52/4/460.full.pdf+html
Journal of Health & Social Behavior (JHSB), published quarterly, is a medical sociology journal that publishes empirical and theoretical articles that apply sociological concepts and methods to the understanding of health and illness and the organization of medicine and health care. Its editorial policy favors manuscripts that are grounded in important theoretical issues in medical sociology or the sociology of mental health and that advance theoretical understanding of the processes by which social factors and human health are inter-related. http://hsb.sagepub.com/
Impact Factor: 2.18
Ranked: 10 out of 58 in Psychology (Social) and 24 out of 116 in Environmental & Occupational Health (Public)
Source: 2010 Journal Citation Reports® (Thomson Reuters, 2011)
SAGE is a leading international publisher of journals, books, and electronic media for academic, educational, and professional markets. Since 1965, SAGE has helped inform and educate a global community of scholars, practitioners, researchers, and students spanning a wide range of subject areas including business, humanities, social sciences, and science, technology, and medicine. An independent company, SAGE has principal offices in Los Angeles, London, New Delhi, Singapore and Washington DC. www.sagepublications.com
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In the face of mass deforestation of the Amazon, recent findings indicate that we could learn from its earliest inhabitants who managed their farmland sustainably. An international team of archaeologists and paleoecologists, including Dr. Mitchell Power, curator of the Garrett Herbarium at the Natural History Museum of Utah and assistant professor in the Department of Geography at the University of Utah, report for the first time that indigenous people, living in the savannas around the Amazonian forest, farmed without using fire. These findings are published today, April ...
