Gillette Syndrome is the social disruption that can occur in a community due to rapid population growth. Such disruptions usually include increased crime, degraded mental health, weakened social and community bonds, abnormally high costs of living, and other social problems.
Gillette Syndrome is most relevant to boomtowns that are growing rapidly due to nearby natural resource extraction, such as coal mining or natural gas drilling.
Psychologist ElDean Kohrs coined the term "Gillette Syndrome" in an attempt to describe the social impacts of rapid coal mining development on the boomtown of Gillette, Wyoming.
Famous quotes containing the word syndrome:
“Women are taught that their main goal in life is to serve others—first men, and later, children. This prescription leads to enormous problems, for it is supposed to be carried out as if women did not have needs of their own, as if one could serve others without simultaneously attending to one’s own interests and desires. Carried to its “perfection,” it produces the martyr syndrome or the smothering wife and mother.”
—Jean Baker Miller (20th century)