Social support and social structure: a descriptive epidemiology.
Social support and social structure: a descriptive epidemiology.
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DOI：
10.2307/2137276
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发表时间：
1994-09
影响因子：
5
通讯作者：
R. Turner;Franco Marino
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
R. Turner;Franco Marino
尽管越来越多的文献证明了社会支持对健康和福祉的重要性，但令人惊讶的是，人们对这一重要资源的社会分配知之甚少。本文提供了关于社会支持和支持资源在社会阶层、婚姻状况、年龄和性别之间的分布的数据，目的是帮助理解社会结构对社会支持过程的影响，并评估心理健康的流行病学变异部分源于社会支持差异的假设。研究发现，感知社会支持的流行病学与心理困扰和障碍的流行病学密切相关。唯一的例外涉及性别，观察到积极而非消极的关系，女性表现出最高水平的社会支持和心理困扰。观察到的社会支持变化模式将这种重要的适应性资源与一个人在社会结构中的位置联系起来，并强化了这样的结论：它代表了一个有前途的干预目标。然而，这些结果的实际重要性与理论意义并不相符。除了婚姻状况之外，我们的研究结果在很大程度上否定了心理健康的社会分布部分归因于社会支持差异的假设。
Despite a very large and growing literature demonstrating the significance of social support for health and well-being, surprisingly little is known about the social distribution of this crucial resource. This paper presents data on the distribution of social support and support resources across social class, marital status, age and gender, with the aims of contributing toward an understanding of the impact of social structures on processes of social support, and of assessing the hypothesis that epidemiological variations in mental health arise partially from social support differences. The epidemiology of perceived social support was found to correspond closely to the epidemiology of psychological distress and disorder. The single exception involved gender, where a positive rather than negative relationship was observed, with women demonstrating the highest levels of both social support and psychological distress. The observed patterns of variation in social support link this significant adaptive resource to one's locations in the social structure and reinforce the conclusion that it represents a promising intervention target. The practical importance of these results, however, are not matched by theoretical significance. Except in the case of marital status, our findings largely discount the hypothesis that the social distribution of mental health is partially attributable to social support differences.