ABSTRACT
There has long been substantial interest in the influence of social and environmental factors on mental health. Landmark studies in the 19th and early 20th century laid the groundwork for a considerable amount of subsequent research on social and environmental determinants of mental health. In the late 1800s, Emile Durkheim (1897) explored the influence of religious beliefs on suicide rates, finding lower rates of suicide in countries that were predominantly Catholic than in predominantly Protestant countries. A 1932 study of hospital admissions for psychosis in Minnesota documented a relationship between migration and mental health, noting that hospitalization rates for psychosis were twice as high among Norwegian migrants to Minnesota as they were among Minnesota natives and individuals still living in Norway (Ødegård, 1932). A few years later, the Chicago School of Social Ecology conducted studies on characteristics of residential neighborhoods and mental disorder and found a greater burden of schizophrenia and substance abuse disorder in Chicago neighborhoods lacking social integration compared to more “socially organized” neighborhoods (Faris & Dunham, 1939; Silver, Mulvey, & Swanson, 2002). The Stirling County Study of the 1950s linked characteristics of social disintegration, such as hostility, inadequate leadership, and poverty, to increased psychiatric risk (Leighton, Harding, Macklin, Hughes, & Leighton, 1963). At the individual level, Hollingshead and Redlich (1958) found an inverse association between social class and mental illness.
