ABSTRACT
The importance of George Brown's sustained contribution to medical sociology through his longitudinal studies of psychiatric disorder and its relationship to social context is widely recognised. This collection of seventeen chapters exemplifies a particular way of working as a medical sociologist which focuses on the understanding of the meaning of social experiences as the key to an individual's health status. It combines the biographical richness of qualitative analysis and thus reach conclusions on the basis of statistical significance.
The contributors mainly focus on conditions of depression and anxiety, relating these to the meanings including both demographic aspects such as gender, parity, lifestyle, employment, refugee/immigration status, humiliation, entrapment, loss and also more interpersonal stresses such as neglect, abuse and critical or unsupportive relationships.
This is a book which offers a rich treasury of information for all researchers interested in understanding the complex relationship between our inner and outer worlds; it captures the essence of George Brown's unique way of working.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part I|26 pages
Social psychiatry and social science
chapter 3|9 pages
Bringing meaning back into social psychiatric research
part II|41 pages
Measurement of key psychosocial factors in research
part III|140 pages
Model building
chapter 9|19 pages
Towards a dynamic stress-vulnerability model of depression
chapter 11|15 pages
The childhood experience of care and abuse (CECA)
part IV|27 pages
Psychosocial factors in conditions other than depression
chapter 15|12 pages
Life stress and bipolar disorder
part V|29 pages
Postscript