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Cover -- Half Title -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Part I: INTRODUCTION -- 1 Introduction -- Understanding the Connections between Social and Personal Problems -- Distress as a Sign -- Gradations in Distress -- Ordinary People in the Community -- Preview -- Part I: Introduction -- Part II: Researching the Causes of Distress -- Chapter 2: Measuring Psychological Distress. -- Chapter 3: Real-World Causes of Real-World Misery. -- Part III: Social Patterns of Distress -- Chapter 4: Established Patterns. -- Chapter 5: New Patterns. -- Part IV: Explaining the Patterns -- Chapter 6: Life Change: An Abandoned Explanation. -- Chapter 7: Alienation. -- Chapter 8: Authoritarianism and Inequity. -- Part V: Conclusion -- Chapter 9: Why Some People Are More Distressed Than Others -- Part II: RESEARCHING THE CAUSES OF DISTRESS -- 2 Measuring Psychological Weil-Being and Distress -- What Is Psychological Distress? -- Depression and Anxiety -- Mood and Malaise -- The Opposite of Well-Being -- Not Dissatisfaction or Alienation -- Not Mental Illness -- A Human Universal -- Diagnosis: Superimposed Distinctions -- Psychological Problems Are Real, But Not Entities -- The Linguistic Legacy of Infectious-Disease Epidemiology. -- Reification of Categories in Psychiatry. -- The Alternative: The Type and Severity of Symptoms. -- Reliability versus Certainty: The Fallacy of the Two-Category Scale. -- A Person Does Not Have to Be Diagnosed to Be Helped. -- How a Diagnosis Is Made -- Diagnosing Schizophrenia. -- A Sea of Troubles -- The Patterns of Symptoms: Galaxies, Nebulae, or Spectra? -- Mapping the 4,095 Correlations among Ninety-One Symptoms. -- A Circular Spectrum. -- The Multiplication of Diagnoses -- Conclusion: The Story of a Woman Diagnosed -- Appendix of Symptom Indexes -- Schizophrenia -- Paranoia -- Depressed Mood -- Manic Mood

Does neighborhood socioeconomic status (SES) have a significant positive effect on health over and above the personal and household socioeconomic status of the residents who live there, and, if it does, what is its relative importance compared to an individual's own SES? Resolution of this question has been impeded by lack of conceptual clarity in the definitions of socioeconomic status on the micro– and macro–levels, and unreliable and noncomprehensive adjustment for micro–level socioeconomic status. Using the Community, Crime and Health Survey (CCH), based on a representative sample of Illinois households with linked census tract information, we find that, with adjustment for personal socioeconomic status, residents of socioeconomically disadvantaged neighborhoods have significantly higher levels of physical impairment than do residents of more advantaged neighborhoods. The neighborhood effect is small compared to individual socioeconomic status, especially education, employment status, household income, and economic hardship, all of which have larger associations with health than does neighborhood socioeconomic status (measured as home ownership, college–educated adults, and poverty). in comparison, home ownership on the micro–level does not have a significant effect on physical functioning. We conclude that about 40 percent of the association between neighborhood socioeconomic status and individual health is contextual and about 60 percent is compositional.

This paper examines the conditions under which normlessness leads to trouble with the law and the mechanisms through which social structure affects trouble with the law. Objective conditions of structural inconsistency, common in low socioeconomic positions, can lead to normlessness. The results presented here show that the association of normlessness and trouble with the law depends on whether normlessness is combined with a sense of powerlessness or with one of instrumentalism. Among persons who see themselves as powerless, normlessness is not associated with trouble with the law. Among persons who see themselves as instrumental, normlessness is associated with greater trouble with the law.

This paper reviews survey research explaining the social patterns of distress. There are four basic patterns: (a) The higher one's social status the lower one's distress; (b) women are more distressed than men; (c) married persons are less distressed than unmarried persons, and; (d) the greater the number of undesirable events in one's life the greater one's distress. The major forms of distress are malaise (such as lethargy, headaches, and trembling hands), anxiety (such as feeling afraid, worried, or irritable), and depression (such as feeling sad, worthless, or hopeless). Sociological theory suggests that alienation, authoritarianism, and inequity produce distress. The research indicates that distress is reduced by control, commitment, support, meaning, normality, flexibility, trust, and equity. The presence or absence of these accounts for the social patterns of distress.

A survey of Mexican Americans (N = 194, administered a questionnaire via face-to-face interview) in El Paso, Tex, reveals that participation in Spanish-speaking networks lowers the expected level of SES, while higher status decreases the expected level of participation in Spanish-speaking networks. This reciprocal relationship is simultaneously a force of assimilation & of dissimilation. 2 Tables, 1 Figure, 30 References. Modified HA.