Social class, parental social class, and social mobility in psychiatric patients and general population controls

Abstract

SYNOPSISPrevious studies have suggested that, because of the chronic and disabling nature of mental illness, psychiatric patients do not fare as well in their careers as they should do. In the present study the parental social class, the current social class and the social mobility has been compared in 2,861 male referrals to the psychiatric services in North-Eastern Scotland and 1,487 men randomly selected from the local population. Within the psychiatric sample similar comparisons have been made between diagnostic groups. In all three aspects of social class considered decade of birth was shown to be an important variable.

Social class and social mobility in depressed patients

“…On the whole, our findings confirm those of Birtchnell (5) and Hare et al (13) that there is no significant variation in social class distribution among the parents in different diagnostic groups.…”

“…Few studies of that kind have been done with regard to depressive disorders. The parents of depressed patients in Birtchnell's study (5) did not differ significantly from the expected distribution. So far, little attention has been paid to the possible variation of the effect of social class between diagnostic subgroups of depression.…”

Effect of social class at birth on risk and presentation of schizophrenia: case-control study

“…One explanation for the effect of social class is that people from lower social classes find it more difficult to access services 22. However, Cooper found no support for this hypothesis,26 and in our region the community service is more focused on people from lower socioeconomic groups.…”

The Conceptualization and Measurement of Social Mobility Differences: A Brief Reply to Rodgers and Mann

“…By defining their hypothetical data as Birtchnell's (1971) control group is used as a control group for the Goldberg and Morrison (1963) study. e These data use Rodgers and Mann's corrected frequencies for Birtchnell's (1971) data.…”