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In 1981, Leonard Pearlin and his colleagues published an article that would ra- cally shift the sociological study of mental health from an emphasis on psychiatric disorder to a focus on social structure and its consequences for stress and psyc- logical distress. Pearlin et al. (1981) proposed a deceptively simple conceptual model that has now influenced sociological inquiry for almost three decades. With his characteristic penchant for reconsidering and elaborating his own ideas, Pearlin has revisited the stress process model periodically over the years (Pearlin 1989, 1999; Pearlin et al. 2005; Pearlin and Skaff 1996). One of the consequences of this continued theoretical elaboration of the...
This book describes ways in which society shapes the mental health of its members, and shapes the lives of those identified as mentally ill. Experts in the sociology of mental health discuss in depth the interface between society and the inward experiences of its members.
I am very pleased to have been asked to do abrief foreword to this second CRISP volume, The Social Context o[ Coping. I know most of the participants and their work, and respect them as first-rate and influen tial research scholars whose research is at the cusp of current concerns in the field of stress and coping. Psychological stress is central to human adaptation. It is difficult to visualize the study of adaptation, health, illness, personal soundness, and psychopathology without recognizing their dependence on how weil people cope with the stresses of living. Since the editor, John Eckenrode, has portrayed the themes of each of the chapters in his introduction, I can limit myself to a few general comments about stress and coping. Stress research began, as unexplored fields often do, with very sim ple-should I say simplistic?-ideas about how to define the concept. Early approaches were unidimensional and input-output in outlook, modeled implicitly on Hooke's late-17th-century engineering analysis in which external load was an environmental stressor, stress was the area over wh ich the load acted, and strain was the deformation of the struc tu re such as a bridge or building.
Given medical advances and greater understanding of healthful living habits, people are living longer lives. Proportionally speaking, a greater percentage of the population is elderly. Despite medical advances, there is still no cure for dementia, and as elderly individuals succumb to Alzheimer's Disease or related dementia, more and more people are having to care their elderly parents and /or siblings. Profiles in Caregiving is practical source of information for anyone who teaches caregiving, acts as a caregiver, or studies caregiving. This book discusses recent research on stress factors associated with caregiving, and what factors impact on successful versus non-successful adaptation to ...
This handbook describes ways in which society shapes the mental health of its members, and shapes the lives of those who have been identified as mentally ill. The text explores the social conditions that lead to behaviors defined as mental illness, and the ways in which the concept of mental illness is socially constructed around those behaviors. The book also reviews research that examines socially conditioned responses to mental illness on the part of individuals and institutions, and ways in which these responses affect persons with mental illness. It evaluates where the field has been, identifies its current location and plots a course for the future.
Caregiving has emerged as a critical issue in the second half of the life cycle. With the growth of the older population, there have been dramatic increases in the number of people needing care and assistance. The responsibility for care typically falls on families at a time when they have limited resources to meet these needs. At a societal level, the need for care for growing numbers of disabled elders poses a major challenge for how to organize supportive services in an efficient and responsive system. Bringing together multiple perspectives on caregiving, the authors' explore informal and formal family caregiving and the pivotal issue of how these systems interface and interact. An overview of this variation is provided by examining family caregiving from three perspectives: * the effects of culture on helping patterns and family responsibility, * how different disabilities affect patterns of family care, and * longitudinal perspectives on the impact that caregiving has on family members.
Sociologists often view research on mental health as peripheral to the real work of the discipline. This volume contains essays that reassert the importance of mental health research in sociology. Experts in the field articulate the contributions that mental health research has made, and can make, in resolving key theoretical and empirical debates. The contributions provide answers to critical questions regarding the social origins of--and social responses to--mental illness.
Social Perspective explores the impact of social factors on individual health, a topic often overlooked in the practice of psychiatry, psychology, and medicine. Richard U'Ren synthesizes viewpoints and information usually dispersed among many disciplines to show how social roles, political-economic conditions, and the social stratification system all contribute to individual well-being or disorder. U'Ren investigates how access to income, education, and social affiliations buffers individuals against stress and facilitates coping. He demonstrates that those who lack access to such resources suffer the poorest health and the greatest mental distress a problem that has only grown more challenging with rising inequality. Adding a new dimension to understandings of mental health, mental illness, and psychological distress, Social Perspective offers clinicians a concise account of society's impact on the individual.
Self-esteem is an academic and popular phenomenon, vigorously researched and debated, sometimes imbued with magical qualities, other times vilified as the bane of the West's preoccupation with self. Though thousands of articles have been devoted to the topic, and bookshops work to feed the public's appetite for advice on revealing, enhancing and maintaining self-esteem, conflicting claims and findings have placed the field in disarray. In a very real sense, self-esteem is a victim of its own popularity. This book seeks to add clarity to a concept earlier examined by such notable self theorists as Morris Rosenberg but eminently worthy of re-examination and extension. We do this by asking some leading thinkers on self-esteem theory, measurement and application to assess what we know about self-esteem, and link it to important aspects of society and the human experience.