Status Resources and Behavioral Deviance as Contingencies of Societal Reaction

Rushing, William A.; Esco, Jack

doi:10.1093/sf/56.1.132

Cited by 18 publications

(10 citation statements)

References 17 publications

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“…Only racelethnicity, occupation, marital status, and relationship of vignette person to subject significantly affected subjects' judgments and, as such, did so with relative weakness when compared to the effects of a vignette person's psychological profile. In fact, the psychological dimensions alone accounted for nearly all of the explained variance in subjects' mental illness ratings, a finding consistent with previous research (e.g., Rushing 1979;Rushing and Esco 1977).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

“…Research exists suggesting that sociodemographic attributes of the person being judged affect mental illness ratings (e.g., Broverman et al 1970;Coie et al 1980;La Torre 1975;Rosenkrantz et al 1968;Rushing 1979;Rushing and Esco 1977). In order to determine the weight given to these sociodemographic characteristics in the face of the psychological dimensions eight background dimensions were included in each vignette.…”

Section: Sociodemographic Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…6. However, data on mental hospital admissions has indicated that patients do not vary significantly by gender and other demographic variables when admitted for severe mental disorders, suggesting that a vignette person's behavioral andlor psychological attributes are given greater weight in the recognition of mental illness than demographic factors (Rushing 1979;Rushing and Esco 1977).…”

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Sorting Out the Cuckoo's Nest: A Factorial Survey Approach to the Study of Popular Conceptions of Mental Illness

Thurman

Lam²,

Rossi³

1988

The Sociological Quarterly

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Research relevant to understanding how mental illness is popularly conceptualized owes much to the methods pioneered by Star in 1950. However, while her six vignettes have been used extensively over the last 30 years to test the public's ability to recognize mental illness, subsequent research has provided little insight into which factors contribute most to the judgment process. This study introduces a factorial survey research method that is more appropriate for the task. A sample of 143 college undergraduates responding to the experimentally designed vignettes were found to be most influenced by a vignette person's behavioral impairment, followed by the psychological attributes of depression, obtrusive thoughts, beliefs, conflict, engagement/withdrawal, fear, and anxiety. Other factors that significantly affected mental illness ratings included a vignette person's past history of mental illness and the relationship of the vignette person to the rater. These ten dimensions were found to be considerably more important than sociodemographic characteristics in judging persons mentally ill.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 90%

Section: Sociodemographic Independent Variablesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Acknowledgmentsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Sorting Out the Cuckoo's Nest: A Factorial Survey Approach to the Study of Popular Conceptions of Mental Illness

Thurman

Lam²,

Rossi³

1988

The Sociological Quarterly

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“…46 1-46108-thoits consequences Phelan 1999a, 1999b), study findings have been mixed regarding the proposition that differential labeling occurs on the basis of marginalized status, especially with respect to mental illness labeling (Gove 1975(Gove , 1980(Gove , 1982Phelan and Link 1999;Scheff 1984). Controversy has surrounded the observation that rates of mental hospitalization and involuntary commitment are higher among members of lower status or marginalized groups, such as racial minorities, the unmarried, the uneducated, and the poor (e.g., Rosenfield 1984;Rushing 1971Rushing , 1978Rushing and Esco 1977). Labeling theorists cite these patterns as evidence that categorizations made by mental health professionals and legal authorities are biased (e.g., Krohn and Akers 1977;Scheff 1974).…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Labeling of Mental Illness by Social Status: A New Look at an Old Problem

Thoits

2005

J Health Soc Behav

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Whether the higher rates of mental hospitalization and involuntary treatment for marginal social groups are due to differential labeling or simply to the occurrence of higher rates of disorder in these groups remains unresolved. I reexamine this issue with data from the National Comorbidity Survey (N = 5,877) that allow comparisons between disturbed individuals living in the community untreated and disturbed persons who have been hospitalized or seen a professional for their mental health problems under pressure or voluntarily. Contrary to labeling theory, members of lower status groups are not consistently overrepresented among those who have been hospitalized or seen a professional against their will. Consistent with self-labeling theory, persons with greater education and those not in poverty are disproportionately present among individuals who sought treatment by choice. Additional analyses show that factors that predict service utilization are important determinants of mental health service use but do not account systematically for status disparities in hospital or outpatient treatment, especially disparities by poverty status. Although I do not confirm a central tenet of labeling theory here, the negative consequences of labeling and stigma continue to be well-supported in the literature.

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“…We repeated these multivariate analyses among subgroups of persons with severe, moderately serious, and substance‐related disorders, respectively, to check the possibility that biased labeling may be contingent on the individual’s degree of impairment (not shown, available on request). Rushing (1978; Rushing and Esco, 1977) has argued that when disturbed individuals’ symptoms are severe and obvious, their social status will play little role in psychiatric professionals’ judgments, but when their symptoms are mild or moderate in seriousness, their relative status will sway professionals’ categorizations. Our analyses showed that among respondents with severe disorders, status variables had few, scattered, and unsystematic influences on hospitalization, consistent with Rushing’s argument as well as with Scheff’s (1964:452) proposition that serious, persistent, and visible deviant behaviors will result in labeling.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Differential Labeling of Mental Illness Revisited: Patterns Before and After the Rise of Managed Care

Thoits¹,

Evenson

2008

Sociological Forum

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With the National Comorbidity Survey of the early 1990s, Thoits (2005) recently showed that lower‐status mentally ill individuals were not more often hospitalized or pressured into psychiatric treatment than comparably ill persons of higher status, disconfirming a central hypothesis of labeling theory. However, that finding may have been due to changes in the mental health treatment system introduced by the spread of managed care. The differential labeling hypothesis is reexamined here with data from the Epidemiological Catchment Area Studies (ECA) collected in the early 1980s before managed‐care plans began to dominate the insurance marketplace and from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication conducted in the early 2000s when managed care had saturated the market. Little systematic support for the differential labeling hypothesis was found in the three studies, although, over time, the higher rates of mental hospitalization among less educated and low‐income individuals found in the ECA survey disappeared. Trends across the studies suggest that educated and affluent persons with psychiatric problems more frequently sought hospital care. These findings further undermine the validity of the differential labeling hypothesis and suggest that service utilization or treatment‐seeking factors may help explain mental hospitalization rates.

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Status Resources and Behavioral Deviance as Contingencies of Societal Reaction

Cited by 18 publications

References 17 publications

Sorting Out the Cuckoo's Nest: A Factorial Survey Approach to the Study of Popular Conceptions of Mental Illness

Sorting Out the Cuckoo's Nest: A Factorial Survey Approach to the Study of Popular Conceptions of Mental Illness

Differential Labeling of Mental Illness by Social Status: A New Look at an Old Problem

Differential Labeling of Mental Illness Revisited: Patterns Before and After the Rise of Managed Care

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