March 26, 2013
Community Mental Health
Lecture 17
Those that you are closest to in your social network are usually the ones that you turn to
first when you need help with a problem
People have ways of getting and giving support that makes it low profile and people don’t
acknowledge that support is given
Example: study of how high school teachers get help with problems related to
students or the curriculum
He would sit in the teacher’s lounge and observed them
Found that when teachers had a problem, they would tell a story about what
happened
The other teacher they would talk to would respond that they went through the
same experience and told their story and what they tried doing to solve the
problem; helping interaction arising spontaneously and naturally in the context of
experience swapping
Support groups do the same sort of thing; a lot of the time is devoted to experience
swapping, sharing their experiences
Self-help groups make it so that no one individual is always the person receiving
help; every one gets and gives help, changes at different times
Creates equality when it comes to experience among individuals
Exchanging their experiential knowledge as opposed to getting expert knowledge
from doctors, psychologists, etc.
The leader of support groups is usually a professional that will spend some time
giving professional information
The groups have dual content: expert knowledge and experiential knowledge; gain
from both
An expert can’t normalize your situation like other people going through the same
thing does just by their presence; makes them feel like they’re not alone in their
experience
We need a sense of belonging and reliable alliance with others
Social support is of value because it’s a stress buffer that can be manipulated
People are part of our environment and therefore we have the potential to do
something with people relative to the possibility of doing something with traits
o We know that some traits are stress buffers, but you can’t manipulate them;
relatively stable
o You can try to do something about people’s personal social networks What makes social support an important and valued resource? (same as info from applied
social lecture by him)
Social comparison
o Schachter studies
Person goes to a lab and is told that they will be involved in a study
where they are given different levels of shocks to see how they react;
told that it won’t do any permanent damage
Then told that there’s a problem with the machines, so they have to
wait for it to be fixed
Given the option of waiting in a room with other participants or by
themselves in a cubicle
Most of them chose to wait with the other participants
Possibilities for this:
Want to see how they react
Want to come up with a plan for leaving and not doing the
study
Think that you might be more distracted from the study when
you’re with other people; don’t think about the pain of the
shocks
In another study, he changed the conditions slightly
Told that they could wait alone or with other participants but they
couldn’t talk
Still wanted to wait with other people
Shows that talking with other people wasn’t the reason for wanting to
be with people
Another study had the conditions of waiting alone, waiting with other
participants, or waiting with students waiting to see their faculty
advisor
Still wanted to be with the participants; misery loves company, want
to be with people going through the same situation
o Determined that when we’re threatened and experience high amounts of
stress, we have the desire to affiliate with others who we perceive as similar
to us; appropriate targets of comparison
o Shown in self-help groups and support groups; meets the desire to compare
ourselves to others
o People use social comparison to get feedback about the appropriateness of
their feelings, thoughts, and behaviour
Epidemiology
o Studies
Take a representative sample of adults in the population
Measure their lifestyle health behaviours (smoking, nutrition,
exercise), their health status, and their public and private social ties
Social ties – marital status, participation in voluntary
organizations, and the number of family and close friends that
they have regular contact with o Creates a social network index
Get all this information and follow them for 10 years
Look at the rate of mortality and m
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