Showing papers by "Nan Lin published in 1984"

Social support and depression. A panel study.

Abstract: The substantial contemporary interest in the epidemiologic functions of social support or social support networks in depression and other disorders is rooted in a number of sources. These include, first of all, the growing scientific and clinical conviction that stress may be a significant factor in a wide variety of psychiatric and physical disorders. Second, in the epidemiologic literature in particular, the weight of evidence that recent life changes have a significant, if modest, effect on the occurrence of depression leads to a sustained search for clarification of factors which may explain the differential vulnerability of individuals to illness in the context of recent life changes or other stressors. These factors include biological, psychological or social support. Third, highly suggestive evidence exists that social support may serve to reduce the risk of illness in the face of stress (the buffering effect of social support). Fourth, intimate relationships have theoretical importance within the fields of sociology, clinical psychology, and psychiatry. These interests have generated a substantial body of literature in the last decade on the role of social support in the epidemiological investigation of mental health. While several earlier studies can be identified as bearing on some empirical evidence of the effect of social support on mental health (e.g., Nuckolls and others' study of pregnant women, 1972; Kaplan et al.'s study of unemployed workers, 1977; Brown and Harris' investigations into the intimates of mental patients, 1978), it was in the midseventies, however, that a number of authors explicitly called for the study of social support (Cobb 1976;