Neighborhoods, Society and Culture
Problems in communities or cultures, including poverty, unemployment or underemployment, lack of social cohesion, and migration, have been implicated in the development of mental disorders. Stresses and strains related to socioeconomic position (socioeconomic status (SES) or social class) have been linked to the occurrence of major mental disorders, with a lower or more insecure educational, occupational, economic or social position generally linked to more mental disorders. There have been mixed findings on the nature of the links and on the extent to which pre-existing personal characteristics influence the links. Both personal resources and community factors have been implicated, as well as interactions between individual-level and regional-level income levels. The causal role of different socioeconomic factors may vary by country. Socioeconomic deprivation in neighborhoods can cause worse mental health, even after accounting for genetic factors. In addition, minority ethnic groups, including first or second-generation immigrants, have been found to be at greater risk for developing mental disorders, which has been attributed to various kinds of life insecurities and disadvantages, including racism. The direction of causality is sometimes unclear, and alternative hypotheses such as the Drift Hypothesis sometimes need to be discounted.
Mental disorders have also been linked to the overarching social, economic and cultural system. A value system that promotes individualism, weakens social ties, and creates ambivalence towards children, is being spread or imposed via globalization, yet could adversely affect children's mental health.
Read more about this topic: Causes Of Mental Disorders
Famous quotes containing the words society and/or culture:
“In great cities men are brought together by the desire of gain. They are not in a state of co-operation, but of isolation, as to the making of fortunes; and for all the rest they are careless of neighbours. Christianity teaches us to love our neighbour as ourself; modern society acknowledges no neighbour.”
—Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)