Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T05:36:50.210Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

19 - Cities, Psychosis, and Social Defeat

from Part II - Applications

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 September 2020

By
Firrhaana Sayanvala ,
Lisa Bornstein ,
Suparna Choudhury ,
Jai Shah ,
Daniel Weinstock  and
Ian Gold
Edited by
Laurence J. Kirmayer ,
Carol M. Worthman ,
Shinobu Kitayama ,
Robert Lemelson  and
Constance A. Cummings
Laurence J. Kirmayer
Affiliation:
McGill University, Montréal
Carol M. Worthman
Affiliation:
Emory University, Atlanta
Shinobu Kitayama
Affiliation:
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
Robert Lemelson
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles
Constance A. Cummings
Affiliation:
The Foundation for Psychocultural Research
Get access

Summary

Three broad social factors – childhood adversity, immigration, and urban living – are robustly associated with an increased risk of schizophrenia. To date, however, there is no consensus on what it is about these phenomena that raises the risk of psychotic illness. In 2005, J. P. Selten and E. Cantor-Graae proposed a “social defeat” hypothesis according to which the social determinants of schizophrenia are best characterized as experiences of social subordination. In recent years, the social-defeat hypothesis has been broadened to include experiences of social exclusion. In this chapter, we review the different versions of the social defeat hypothesis and argue that it fails to account for the urban effect. We further argue for the potential utility of paying greater attention to social science when theorizing about the social determinants of schizophrenia.

Keywords

psychosisschizophreniasocial determinantscitiesurbansocial defeatmethods
Type
Chapter
Information
Culture, Mind, and Brain
Emerging Concepts, Models, and Applications
 , pp. 450 - 460
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2020

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Akdeniz, C., Tost, H., & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2014). The neurobiology of social environmental risk for schizophrenia: An evolving research field. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 49(4), 507–17. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-014-0858-4Google Scholar
Anglin, D. M., Greenspoon, M., Lighty, Q., & Ellman, L. M. (2016). Race-based rejection sensitivity partially accounts for the relationship between racial discrimination and distressing attenuated positive psychotic symptoms. Early Intervention in Psychiatry, 10(5), 411–18. https://doi.org/10.1111/eip.12184Google Scholar
Bettencourt, L. M. A. (2013). The origins of scaling in cities. Science, 340(6139), 1438–41. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1235823Google Scholar
Bourque, F., van der Ven, E., Fusar-Poli, P., & Malla, A. (2012). Immigration, social environment and onset of psychotic disorders. Current Pharmaceutical Design, 18(4), 518–26. https://doi.org/10.2174/138161212799316028Google Scholar
Calabrese, F., Smoreda, Z., Blondel, V. D., & Ratti, C. (2011). Interplay between Telecommunications and face-to-face interactions: A study using mobile phone data. PLoS ONE, 6(7), e20814. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0020814CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cantor-Graae, E. (2007). The contribution of social factors to the development of schizophrenia: A review of recent findings. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, 52(2), 277–86. https://doi.org/10.1177/070674370705200502Google Scholar
Castillejos, M. C., Martin-Pérez, C., & Moreno-Küstner, B. (2018). A systematic review and meta-analysis of the incidence of psychotic disorders: The distribution of rates and the influence of gender, urbanicity, immigration and socio-economic level. Psychological Medicine, 48(13), 2101–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291718000235CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Chong, H. Y., Teoh, S. L., Wu, D. B., Kotirum, S., Chiou, C. F., & Chaiyakunapruk, N. (2016). Global economic burden of schizophrenia: A systematic review. Neuropsychiatric Disease and Treatment, 12, 357–73. https://doi.org/10.2147/NDT.S96649.Google Scholar
Cloutier, M., Aigbogun, M. S., Guerin, A., Nitulescu, R., Ramanakumar, A. V., Kamat, S. A., DeLucia, M., Duffy, R., Legacy, S. N., Henderson, C., Francois, C., & Wu, E. (2016). The economic burden of schizophrenia in the United States in 2013. Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 77(6), 764–71. https:// doi.org/10.4088/JCP.15m10278.Google ScholarPubMed
Collip, D., Myin-Germeys, I., & Van Os, J. (2008). Does the concept of “sensitization” provide a plausible mechanism for the putative link between the environment and schizophrenia? Schizophrenia Bulletin, 34(2), 220–5. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbm163Google Scholar
Degnan, A., Berry, K., Sweet, D., Abel, K., Crossley, N., & Edge, D. (2018). Social networks and symptomatic and functional outcomes in schizophrenia: A systematic review and meta-analysis. Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, 53(9), 873–88. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-018-1552-8Google Scholar
DeVylder, J. E., Kelleher, I., Lalane, M., Oh, H., Link, B. G., & Koyanagi, A. (2018). Association of urbanicity with psychosis in low- and middle-income countries. JAMA Psychiatry, 75(7), 678–86. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapsychiatry.2018.0577Google Scholar
Faris, R. E. L., & Dunham, H. W. (1939). Mental disorders in urban areas: An ecological study of schizophrenia and other psychoses. University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Haarmans, M., Vass, V., & Bentall, R. P. (2016). Voices’ use of gender, race and other social categories to undermine female voice-hearers: Implications for incorporating intersectionality within CBT for psychosis. Psychosis, 8(3), 203–13. https://doi.org/10.1080/17522439.2015.1131323CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammels, C., Pishva, E., De Vry, J., van den Hove, D. L. A., Prickaerts, J., van Winkel, R., Selten, J.-P., Lesch, K.-P., Daskalakis, N. P., Steinbusch, H. W. M., van Os, J., Kenis, G., & Rutten, B. P. F. (2015). Defeat stress in rodents: From behavior to molecules. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 59, 111–40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2015.10.006CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Hollis, F., & Kabbaj, M. (2014). Social defeat as an animal model for depression. ILAR J, 55(2), 221–32. https://doi.org/10.1093/ilar/ilu002Google Scholar
Howes, O. D., & Kapur, S. (2009). The dopamine hypothesis of schizophrenia: Version III – The final common pathway. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 35(3), 549–62. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbp006Google Scholar
Kawachi, I., & Berkman, L. F. (2001). Social ties and mental health. Journal of Urban Health, 78(3), 458–67. https://doi.org/10.1093/jurban/78.3.458Google Scholar
Kirkbride, J. B., Jones, P. B., Ullrich, S., & Coid, J. W. (2014). Social deprivation, inequality, and the neighborhood-level incidence of psychotic syndromes in East London. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 40(1), 169–80. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbs151Google Scholar
Kirkbride, J. B., Morgan, C., Fearon, P., Dazzan, P., Murray, R. M., & Jones, P. B. (2007). Neighbourhood-level effects on psychoses: Re-examining the role of context. Psychological Medicine, 37(10), 1413–25. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291707000499Google Scholar
Krabbendam, L., & van Os, J. (2005). Schizophrenia and urbanicity: A major environmental influence – conditional on genetic risk. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 31(4), 795–9. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbi060Google Scholar
Lazer, D., Pentland, A., Adamic, L., Aral, S., Barabási, A.-L., Brewer, D., Brewer, D., Christakis, N., Contractor, N., Fowler, J., Gutmann, M., Jebara, T., King, G., Macy, M., Roy, D., & Van Alstyne, M. (2009). Computational social science. Science, 323(5915), 721–3. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1167742CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Lederbogen, F., Kirsch, P., Haddad, L., Streit, F., Tost, H., Schuch, P., Wüst, S., Pruessner, J. C., Rietschel, M., Deuschle, M., & Meyer-Lindenberg, A. (2011). City living and urban upbringing affect neural social stress processing in humans. Nature, 474(7352), 498–501. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature10190Google Scholar
Li, D., Law, S., & Andermann, L. (2012). Association between degrees of social defeat and themes of delusion in patients with schizophrenia from immigrant and ethnic minority backgrounds. Transcultural Psychiatry, 49(5), 735–49. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363461512464625Google Scholar
Luhrmann, T. M. (2007). Social defeat and the culture of chronicity: Or, why schizophrenia does so well over there and so badly here. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 31(2), 135–72. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11013-007-9049-zGoogle Scholar
Maraj, A., Veru, F., Morrison, L., Joober, R., Malla, A, Iyer, S., & Shah, J. (2018). Disengagement in immigrant groups receiving services for a first episode of psychosis. Schizophrenia Research, 193, 399–405. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.schres.2017.07.054CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Marwaha, S., Johnson, S., Bebbington, P., Stafford, M., Angermeyer, M. C., Brugha, T., Azorin, J.-M., Kilian, R., Hansen, K., & Toumi, M. (2007). Rates and correlates of employment in people with schizophrenia in the UK, France and Germany. British Journal of Psychiatry, 191(1), 30–7. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.bp.105.020982Google Scholar
Miritello, G., Lara, R., Cebrian, M., & Moro, E. (2013). Limited communication capacity unveils strategies for human interaction. Scientific Reports, 3, 1950. https://doi.org/10.1038/srep01950Google Scholar
Misiak, B., Krefft, M., Bielawski, T., Moustafa, A. A., Sąsiadek, M. M., & Frydecka, D. (2017). Toward a unified theory of childhood trauma and psychosis: A comprehensive review of epidemiological, clinical, neuropsychological and biological findings. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 75, 393–406. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2017.02.015Google Scholar
Morgan, C., Kirkbride, J., Hutchinson, G., Craig, T., Morgan, K., Dazzan, P., Boydell, J., Doody, G. A., Jones, P. B., Murray, R. M., Leff, J., & Fearon, P. (2008). Cumulative social disadvantage, ethnicity and first-episode psychosis: A case-control study. Psychological Medicine, 38(12), 1701–15. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291708004534Google Scholar
Pedersen, C. B., & Mortensen, P. B. (2001). Evidence of a dose-response relationship between urbanicity during upbringing and schizophrenia risk. Archives of General Psychiatry, 58(11), 1039–46. https://doi.org/10.1001/archpsyc.58.11.1039Google Scholar
Priebe, S., Chevalier, A., Hamborg, T., Golden, E., King, M., & Pistrang, N. (2019). Effectiveness of a volunteer befriending programme for patients with schizophrenia: Randomised controlled trial. British Journal of Psychiatry. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.2019.42Google Scholar
Saramäki, J., Leicht, E. A., López, E., Roberts, S. G. B., Reed-Tsochas, F., & Dunbar, R. I. M. (2014). Persistence of social signatures in human communication. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 111(3), 942–7. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1308540110Google Scholar
Sariaslan, A., Fazel, S., D’Onofrio, B. M., Långström, N., Larsson, H., Bergen, S. E., Kuja-Halkola, R., & Lichtenstein, P. (2016). Schizophrenia and subsequent neighborhood deprivation: Revisiting the social drift hypothesis using population, twin and molecular genetic data. Translational Psychiatry, 6, e796. https://doi.org/10.1038/tp.2016.62Google Scholar
Schläpfer, M., Bettencourt, L. M. A., Grauwin, S., Raschke, M., Claxton, R., Smoreda, Z., West, G. B., & Ratti, C. (2014). The scaling of human interactions with city size. Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 11(98), 20130789. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2013.0789Google Scholar
Selten, J.-P., & Cantor-Graae, E. (2005). Social defeat: Risk factor for schizophrenia? British Journal of Psychiatry, 187(2), 101–2. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.187.2.101Google Scholar
Selten, J.-P., & Cantor-Graae, E. (2007). Hypothesis: Social defeat is a risk factor for schizophrenia? British Journal of Psychiatry, (S51), s9–s12. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjp.191.51.s9Google Scholar
Selten, J.-P., van der Ven, E., Rutten, B. P. F., & Cantor-Graae, E. (2013). The social defeat hypothesis of schizophrenia: An update. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 39(6), 1180–6. https://doi.org/10.1093%2Fschbul%2Fsbt134Google Scholar
Selten, J.-P., van Os, J., & Cantor-Graae, E. (2016). The social defeat hypothesis of schizophrenia: Issues of measurement and reverse causality. World Psychiatry, 15(3), 294–5. https://doi.org/10.1002/wps.20369Google Scholar
Statistics Canada. (2014–2018). Employment and unemployment rate, annual, population centres and rural areas. Table 14-10-0106-01. [Data file]. www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=1410010601Google Scholar
Toyoda, A. (2017). Social defeat models in animal science: What we have learned from rodent models. Animal Science Journal, 88(7), 944–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/asj.12809Google Scholar
Vassos, E., Pedersen, C. B., Murray, R. M., Collier, D. A., & Lewis, C. M. (2012). Meta-analysis of the association of urbanicity with schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin, 38(6), 1118–23. https://doi.org/10.1093/schbul/sbs096Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×