Drift hypothesis

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Drift hypothesis, concerning the relationship between mental illness and social class, is the argument that illness causes one to have a downward shift in social class. [1] The circumstances of one's social class do not cause the onset of a mental disorder, but rather, an individual's deteriorating mental health occurs first, resulting in low social class attainment. [2] The drift hypothesis is the opposing theory of the social causation thesis, which says being in a lower social class is a contributor to the development of a mental illness.

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A study by E. M. Goldberg and S. L. Morrison looked at the relationship between schizophrenia and social class. They wanted to find out if men, before they had been admitted to a mental hospital, drifted down the occupational scale to unskilled jobs because of their developing illness, or if it was because they were born into families with a lower social class attainment, that they developed their mental illness. They looked at men who had their first admission in a mental hospital between the ages of 25–34. They also looked at their fathers' occupation, in order to see if the social class they grew up in played a role in the development of schizophrenia. They found the men had grown up in families whose social class was similar to the general population. So the social class they grew up in did not seem to be a contributor to the development of their schizophrenia. [3]

Opposition

The main opposition to the drift hypothesis is the social causation thesis, which says social class position is causally related to the probability of mental illness. John W. Fox, from the University of Northern Colorado, conducted a study in 1990 that looked at previous studies concerning the relationship between social class and mental illness. These studies he looked at supported the drift hypothesis, but when he examined them, he found their conclusions were "based on assumptions and methods that lacked empirical support." [4] Another statement in Fox's study was, in studies done on social class and mental illness, "identify drift as an individual's downward intergenerational social mobility after the onset of mental illness, rather than as residential drift from higher to lower class status areas". [4] So depending on what one's definition of drift hypothesis is, there will be data either to support or refute the validity of it.

From an economic perspective of social class and mental illness, the social causation thesis is the ruling theory. People who are unemployed have been shown to have an increased amount of distress; have more physical health problems, which are often seen to be contributors of depression; [1] and experience more frequent and more uncontrollable life events, which studies have shown increase the risk of developing some form of mental illness. [2]

When looking at the gender differences in people who have mental illnesses, women are overly represented. Women are also the majority of people who are in poverty. Deborah Belle, a professor at Boston University, did a literature review on poverty and women's mental health and examined the psychological stressors that poor women and mothers experience. "A number of community studies conducted in the 1970s reported that mothers who were in financially strained circumstances were more likely to develop depressive symptoms than other women. [2]

A person with mental illness, particularly if more severe, may suffer from loss of income. With this may come the need to accept public housing or food or utilities, if the person can find them.

Related Research Articles

A mental disorder, also called a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitting, or occur as a single episode. Many disorders have been described, with signs and symptoms that vary widely between specific disorders. Such disorders may be diagnosed by a mental health professional, usually a clinical psychologist or psychiatrist.

Schizophrenia Mental disorder characterized by psychosis

Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by continuous or relapsing episodes of psychosis. Major symptoms include hallucinations, delusions, paranoia, and disorganized thinking. Other symptoms include social withdrawal, decreased emotional expression, and apathy. Symptoms typically come on gradually, begin in young adulthood, and in many cases never resolve. There is no objective diagnostic test; the diagnosis is used to describe observed behavior that may stem from numerous different causes. Besides observed behavior, doctors will also take a history that includes the person's reported experiences, and reports of others familiar with the person, when making a diagnosis. To diagnose someone with schizophrenia, doctors are supposed to confirm that symptoms and functional impairment are present for six months (DSM-5) or one month (ICD-11). Many people with schizophrenia have other mental disorders, especially substance use disorders, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders, and obsessive–compulsive disorder.

Causes of mental disorders etiology of psychopathology

A mental disorder is an impairment of the mind disrupting normal thinking, feeling, mood, behavior, or social interactions, and accompanied by significant distress or dysfunction. The causes of mental disorders are very complex and vary depending on the particular disorder and the individual. Although the causes of most mental disorders are not fully understood, researchers have identified a variety of biological, psychological, and environmental factors that can contribute to the development or progression of mental disorders. Most mental disorders result in a combination of several different factors rather than just a single factor.

Social mobility Mobility to move social classes

Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households, or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society. This movement occurs between layers or tiers in an open system of social stratification. Open stratification systems are those in which at least some value is given to achieved status characteristics in a society. The movement can be in a downward or upward direction. Markers for social mobility, such as education and class, are used to predict, discuss, and learn more about an individual or a group's mobility in society.

Biological psychiatry or biopsychiatry is an approach to psychiatry that aims to understand mental disorder in terms of the biological function of the nervous system. It is interdisciplinary in its approach and draws on sciences such as neuroscience, psychopharmacology, biochemistry, genetics, epigenetics and physiology to investigate the biological bases of behavior and psychopathology. Biopsychiatry is the branch of medicine which deals with the study of the biological function of the nervous system in mental disorders.

Social psychiatry is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the interpersonal and cultural context of mental disorder and mental wellbeing. It involves a sometimes disparate set of theories and approaches, with work stretching from epidemiological survey research on the one hand, to an indistinct boundary with individual or group psychotherapy on the other. Social psychiatry combines a medical training and perspective with fields such as social anthropology, social psychology, cultural psychiatry, sociology and other disciplines relating to mental distress and disorder. Social psychiatry has been particularly associated with the development of therapeutic communities, and to highlighting the effect of socioeconomic factors on mental illness. Social psychiatry can be contrasted with biopsychiatry, with the latter focused on genetics, brain neurochemistry and medication. Social psychiatry was the dominant form of psychiatry for periods of the 20th century but is currently less visible than biopsychiatry.

Schizophreniform disorder is a mental disorder diagnosed when symptoms of schizophrenia are present for a significant portion of time, but signs of disturbance are not present for the full six months required for the diagnosis of schizophrenia.

Paraphrenia is a mental disorder characterized by an organized system of paranoid delusions with or without hallucinations and without deterioration of intellect or personality.

Status attainment is the process of one attaining one's positions in society, or class. Status attainment is affected by both achieved factors, such as educational attainment, and ascribed factors, such as family income. The theory of status attainment states that one can be mobile, either upwardly or downwardly, in the form of a class system.

Risk factors of schizophrenia include multiple genetic and environmental phenomena. The prevailing model of schizophrenia is that of a neurodevelopmental disorder with no precise boundary, or single cause, and is thought to develop from very complex gene–environment interactions with involved vulnerability factors. The interactions of these risk factors are complicated, as numerous and diverse insults from conception to adulthood can be involved. The combination of genetic and environmental factors leads to deficits in the neural circuits that affect sensory input and cognitive functions.

Sarnoff Andrei Mednick pioneered the prospective high-risk longitudinal study to investigate the etiology (causes) of psychopathology or mental disorders. His emphasis was on schizophrenia, but he also made significant contributions to the study of creativity, psychopathy, alcoholism, and suicide in schizophrenia. He was a Professor Emeritus at The University of Southern California where he had been a tenured professor since the early '70s and remained highly active in his eighties. Mednick was the first scientist to revisit the genetic basis of mental disorders following the backlash against genetics following the era of eugenics. He was the recipient of the Joseph Zubin Award in 1996 and had over 300 peer-reviewed publications on the topic.

Cognitive epidemiology is a field of research that examines the associations between intelligence test scores and health, more specifically morbidity and mortality. Typically, test scores are obtained at an early age, and compared to later morbidity and mortality. In addition to exploring and establishing these associations, cognitive epidemiology seeks to understand causal relationships between intelligence and health outcomes. Researchers in the field argue that intelligence measured at an early age is an important predictor of later health and mortality differences.

Social constructionism, a branch of sociology, queries commonly held views on the nature of reality, touching on themes of normality and abnormality within the context of power and oppression in societal structures. The concept of a social construction of schizophrenia, within a social construction of health and illness notary form, denotes that the label of 'schizophrenia' is one that has been socially constructed through ideological systems, none of which are truly empirical especially as currently there is no definitive evidence as to the cause(s) of schizophrenia.

Schizophrenia and tobacco smoking have been strongly associated. Smoking is known to harm the health of people with schizophrenia, and to negatively affect their cognition.

Social comparison bias is the tendency to have feelings of dislike and competitiveness with someone that is seen as physically or mentally better than oneself.

Epidemiology of schizophrenia

Schizophrenia affects around 0.3–0.7% of people at some point in their life, or 21 million people worldwide as of 2011. By using precise methods in its diagnosis and a large, representative population, schizophrenia seems to occur with relative consistency over time during the last half-century.

Imprinted brain hypothesis Conjecture on the causes of autism and psychosis

The imprinted brain hypothesis is an unsubstantiated hypothesis in evolutionary psychology regarding the causes of autism spectrum and schizophrenia spectrum disorders, first presented by Bernard Crespi and Christopher Badcock in 2008. It claims that certain autistic and schizotypal traits are opposites, and that this implies the etiology of the two conditions must be at odds.

Sex differences in schizophrenia are widely reported. Men and women exhibit different rates of incidence and prevalence, age at onset, symptom expression, course of illness, and response to treatment. Reviews of the literature suggest that understanding the implications of sex differences on schizophrenia may help inform individualized treatment and positively affect outcomes.

Numerous studies around the world have found a relationship between socioeconomic status and mental health. There are higher rates of mental illness in groups with lower socioeconomic status (SES), but there is no clear consensus on the exact causative factors. The two principal models that attempt to explain this relationship are the social causation theory, which posits that socioeconomic inequality causes stress that gives rise to mental illness, and the downward drift approach, which assumes that people predisposed to mental illness are reduced in socioeconomic status as a result of the illness. Most literature on these concepts dates back to the mid-1990s and leans heavily towards the social causation model.

Poverty and health in the United States

As of 2017, 12.3% of Americans were considered in poverty, according to the official poverty measure. People who are in poverty have different health risks than those who are not considered in poverty, as well as different outcomes associated with those risks. People who are in poverty grapple with varying outcomes in physical health, mental health, and access to healthcare. Examining divergences in health between those above and below the poverty line gives insight into conditions for those who live in poverty.

References

  1. 1 2 Hurst, Charles E. (2007). Social Inequality: Forms, Causes, and Consequences (6th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. ISBN   978-0-205-48436-2.
  2. 1 2 3 Perry, Melissa J. (1996). "The Relationship between Social Class and Mental Disorder". Journal of Primary Prevention. 14 (1): 17–30. doi:10.1007/BF02262736. PMID   24254919.
  3. ↑ Goldberg, E. M.; Morrison, S. L. (1988). "Schizophrenia and Social Class". In Buck, Carol (ed.). The Challenge of Epidemiology: Issues and Selected Readings. Washington, DC: Pan American Health Organization. pp.  368–383. ISBN   978-92-75-11505-3. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from PsycInfo Database
  4. 1 2 Fox, John W. (1990). "Social Class, Mental Illness, and Social Mobility: The Social Selection-Drift Hypothesis for Serious Mental Illness". Journal of Health and Social Behavior. 31 (4): 344–353. doi:10.2307/2136818. JSTOR   2136818. PMID   2135936. Retrieved December 2, 2007, from PsycInfo Database
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