Sociology of Health and Illness
Lecture 7
Tahreem Mahmndd
October 22 , 2013
Social Psychological Explanations for Illness
Stress and outcomes, social support and coping, Type-A behvaiour and heart disease, sense of
coherence, mental illness – sociological explanations, social cohesion and social inclusion vs. the
“culture of inequality”
Social-psychological factors related to morbidity and mortality
Stress/distress and resilience
Subjective perception of one’s wellbeing or illness
Sense of control of one’s life/sense of coherence
Sense of justice/injustice
Social support and the subjective perception of support
Can religious prayer heal?
Outcomes of the stress process
Although stress does not cause mental illness, exposure to stress does increase the risk of
experiencing mental health problems probabilistic relationship
There are substantial differences in the types of stressors one is exposed to and in the ways
stress is experienced by different groups in society;
There are many different mental health outcomes associated with stress, e.g. emotional
distress, substance abuse or dependence, traumatic disorders, behavioural disorders, and stress
outcomes over time;
A variety of stress mediators explain how stress influences mental health outcomes they
transit the effects of stress in the ways they influence our mental processes and behaviour: Ex.,
psychological responses to threat, cognitive processes (e.g., threat and situational appraisal)
that affect how individuals respond to potentially stressful situations, the degree of fit between
individuals and their social environments,
There is a small minority of people whole mental health is seriously damaged by exposure to
stress current research seeks to understand why most people adapt to stress while others do
not.
Both personal and social characteristics are important in understanding differential responses to
stress (stress reactivity) and the degree to which an individual is vulnerable to stress (stress
vulnerability). Also spill-over effects from individual stressful events onto family settings (e.g.
how the family copes
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