ABSTRACT
During the past two decades, the concept of social support has become immensely popular in mental health research. It seems as if every research project even remotely concerned with mental health today must include some measure or other of social support. Measured by both its impact on current thinking concerning the social etiology of mental and physical disorders, and by the sheer volume of publications, social support has joined stress and coping as one of the three most important constructs in current mental health research. While stress theory in its original form (Selye, 1950; Wolff, 1953) regarded the individual as a passive organism reacting to adverse environmental conditions, the introduction of social support complements this view by postulating beneficial environmental (social) conditions that may modulate and even compensate for the effects of environmental stress.
