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Biomedical subjects

B S Dohrenwend

Publications and source records attributed to B S Dohrenwend.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources
PubMed1983

Social functioning of psychiatric patients in contrast with community cases in the general population.

Most cases in epidemiologic surveys of community populations have never been treated by mental health professionals. We studied how community cases and patients may be similar or different with respect to their social functioning in such areas as work, marriage, and parenting. There are grounds for two contrasting hypotheses: the universal hypothesis (disorder is accompanied by disability independently of treatment status) and the patient-specific hypothesis (disorder is accompanied by disability only for cases who become patients). We investigated these hypotheses using data from symptom scales and social functioning scales that are part of the Psychiatric Epidemiology Research interview. The sample consisted of 205 adults from the general population and 204 psychiatric patients from Jerusalem. The results provided some support for each hypothesis depending on the types of symptoms and functioning and disorder involved; however, the relationship between symptoms and social functioning in patients as well as cases from the community was weaker than had been supposed.

Adult↗
PubMed1982

Perspectives on the past and future of psychiatric epidemiology. The 1981 Rema Lapouse Lecture.

Two generations of epidemiological studies of the true prevalence of mental disorders have been conducted since the turn of the century. The first and smaller in number took place prior to World War II and was characterized by the use of records and key informants to define "cases." The second, utilizing the greatly expanded nomenclatures that followed World War II, were based for the most part on personal interviews with all subjects or samples there of in communities all over the world. In total, more than 80 different communities were studied by more than 60 different investigators or teams of investigators in these first and second generation studies. The legacy from these studies comes in two main parts: the first consists of methodological problems centering on the question of how to conceptualize and measure mental disorders independently of treatment status; the second is a set of consistent substantive findings about the amounts of various types of mental disorder, the proportions treated and untreated by members of the mental health professions, and the distribution of the disorders according to gender, rural vs urban location, and social class. Analyses of this legacy from first and second generation studies are presented with a view to developing informed speculations about what might be hoped for in the future, vastly different, third generation of studies in this field.

Epidemiologic Methods↗
PubMed1979

Personal versus situational determination of anticipation and control of the occurrence of stressful life events.

A wide variety of laboratory and clinical studies have indicated that stressful events are most harmful when they are perceived as uncontrollable. However, these studies diverge on the question of whether perceptions of control of stressful events are determined by environmental contingencies associated with the events or by a stable expectancy of the perceiver. In a community study 118 respondents were asked to report stressful life events experienced in the last year and were then asked to what extent they anticipated and controlled the occurrence of each event. Data were collected in two waves 1 year apart. Analysis of the reliability, within each wave, of perceptions of control does not indicate a strong personal expectancy effect. It does show some evidence of environmental determination of perceptions, but this result is not consistent on the two waves. These results are interpreted in relation to the issue of ways of reducing harmful effects of stressful life events.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1978

Social stress and community psychology.

Two questions that embarrass community psychologists are: "What do community psychologists do?" "What's the difference between community psychology and clinical psychology?" A conceptual model is proposed to help to find answers to these questions. The model describes a process whereby psychosocial stress leads to psychopathology. The argument is developed that the apparently disparate activities of community psychologists are uniformly directed at undermining the stress process but, given the complexity of this process, vary because they tackle it at different points.

Adaptation, Psychological↗
PubMed1978

Some issues in research on stressful life events.

This paper is concerned with the kind of work that is needed in order to provide a more solid scientific foundation for the belief that life stress causes illness. Although indirect evidence from controlled laboratory studies and from extreme situations provides strong indications of the general relationship between stress and illness, the evidence concerning the effects of naturally occurring and more ordinary stressful life events is less clear. Although we have a body of research indicating that life events are associated with a wide range of disorders and distress, it does not provide a clear picture of the nature and strength of this relationship. In order to clarify our understanding of how stressful life events affect health and illness, we will need to deal with methodological issues that have emerged from research to date and to tackle a major substantive problem that has been largely neglected. The methodological issues are three: a) definition of the populations of life events to be studied; b) measurement of the magnitudes of the life events; and c) use of a research design appropriate to the question to be answered. The substantive issue concerns factors that mediate the impact of life events. Each of these issues is examined in turn in this paper.

Culture↗