Lecture 11: Social Support & Integration Flashcards
why does social support matter?
- Human relationships are important
- Biological need for human connection
- Social bonds & interactions are critical for maintaining good mental health
The Problem with the Solution Podcast
- In the Western world, people with severe mental illness face stigma & severe social judgment
- We don’t tend to integrate people with severe mental illness into society
- We institutionalize when we can
- We support people with mental illness using a medical approach
- In Belgium, they employ greater social support, regardless of mental health status
primary group theory
- our morale/well-being is sustained by our membership within primary groups
- it can damage your cognitive and emotional health, increasing your risk for despair
Durkheim: suicide
- Found that Catholics had better mental health than Protestants
- This was because they weren’t as well-integrated into society and had lower levels of social support
emotional support
Information that tells us we are:
- Cared for and loved
- Esteemed and valid
- Can count on others if we need help
- It is perceived
instrumental or informational support
- Counselling
- Assistance
- Facts
- Advice or feedback
- Received/objective support
material/tangible support
- Provision of goods or services
- Received/objective support
structural support
- Size
- Characteristics
- Density
- Homogeneity
- Transitivity
- Implications for social isolation
strength of weak ties
- People are more likely to more likely to gain beneficial opportunities and material support from people they tangentially know
- Rationale: if people in your inner circle could’ve helped you, they would’ve done so already
perceived vs. received support
- Perceived support is more important than received support because someone has to to understand the support to benefit from it
- Social support is only likely to be effective to the extent that it is perceived
causal directions for social support -> mental health
- Direct associations between social support and mental health
- Low support -> more psychological distress
- Particularly strong associations with depression
- Social support as a buffer between stressors and mental health
what do most social support studies examine?
symptom-related outcomes
social support matters:
- For psychological well-being generally, and for depression in particular, regardless of the level of stressor exposure
- More when stressor exposure is high
social selection perspective
People with psychiatric disabilities have smaller, less dense social networks
4 explanations for social selection
- psychiatric perspective
- social stigma
- caretaker obligations
- artifact of personal inadequacies
psychiatric perspectives
mental illness can make it difficult to participate in social activities
social stigma
mental illness can lead to social rejection, and people may cope with diagnosis through secrecy, isolation, and withdrawal
caretaker obligations
argues that social and economic challenges of caring may have negative implications for the caretaker’s social network
artifact of personal inadequacies
when people are stressed or distressed, they have more difficulties forming or maintaining social relationships
social causation vs. social selection of social support
Most research supports the social causation hypothesis
social influence effect
- Members of the same social network might adopt the attitudes/behaviours of others in their network
- Transfer of emotional states
- Positive or negative mental health effects
- Ex. suicide contagion
Developmental model
- Suggests that our ability to recognize emotional support is part of healthy personal and social development
- As a result, our perceptions of social support are influenced by our current social circumstances and our circumstances earlier in the life course, as well as by our individual personality characteristics
- People who perceive high levels of social support might be better at forging social relationships. They tend to interpret ambiguous comments positively
situation-specific model
- Argues that perceived support is a coping resource that buffers the relationship between social support and health
- Basically the stress process model
social distribution of social support
- Social statuses at higher risk of psychological distress & depression: Low SES, Unmarried, Women
- Hypothesis: these social statuses experience lower levels of social support
- Status differences represent different exposure to structural barriers and opportunities in society
