Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-4rdpn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-12T12:06:58.222Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Social networks and support in long-term psychiatric patients

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 July 2009

C. Maxine Cresswell ,
Liz Kuipers  and
M. J. Power
C. Maxine Cresswell
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, London
Liz Kuipers*
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, London
M. J. Power
Affiliation:
Department of Psychology, Institute of Psychiatry, London
*
1 Address for correspondence: Dr Liz Kuipers, Clinical Psychology Department, Institute of Psychiatry, De Crespigny Park, London SE5 8AF.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Synopsis

This paper describes quantitative and qualitative aspects of social support in a sample of 40 long-term schizophrenic day patients attending a rehabilitation unit. The influence of symptomatology and experience of life stressors on network and support characteristics was also investigated. The primary networks of these patients were found to be small, comprising on average 7 members, of whom only 3 were seen regularly. Despite this, subjects rated their perceived support as adequate. The secondary networks were of the order of 32. It emerged that greater prevalence of negative symptoms was significantly associated with lower ideal levels of support and this group of patients was significantly less likely to seek support in the event of a life stressor. This may be a protective mechanism to insulate the person from the effects of stressful relationships but at the same time means that they are isolated from potential supports. The clinical implications are discussed in terms of offering optimum support for this marginalized group.

Type
Original Articles
Information
Psychological Medicine , Volume 22 , Issue 4 , November 1992 , pp. 1019 - 1026
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1992

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

REFERENCES

Alloway, R. & Bebbington, P. (1987). The buffer theory of social support – a review of the literature. Psychological Medicine 17, 91–108.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andreasen, N. C. (1982). Negative symptoms in schizophrenia. Archives of General Psychiatry 39, 784–788.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Andreasen, N. C. (1984). Scale for the Assessment of Negative Symptoms (SANS).Copyright Dr Nancy Andreasen, Department of Psychiatry, University of Iowa: Iowa City.Google Scholar
Aris, S. (1986). Social support and coping: two studies. Unpublished thesis submitted for the British Psychological Society's Diploma in Clinical Psychology.Google Scholar
Beels, C. C. (1981). Social support and schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin 7, 58–72.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bennett, D. & Morris, I. (1983). Support and rehabilitation. In Theory and Practice of Psychiatric Rehabilitation (ed. Watts, F. N. and Bennett, D. H.), pp. 189–211. John Wiley: New York.Google Scholar
Billings, A. G. & Moos, R. H. (1981). The role of coping responses and social resources in attenuating the stress of life events. Journal of Behavioural Medicine 4, 139–157.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Birley, J. & Hudson, B. (1983). The family, the social network and rehabilitation. In Theory and Practice of Psychiatric Rehabilitation (ed. Watts, F. N. and Bennett, D. H.), pp. 171–188. John Wiley: New York.Google Scholar
Bloom, B. L. (1968). An ecological analysis of psychiatric hospitalization. Multivariate Behavioural Research 3, 423–463.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boissevain, J. (1974). Friends of Friends. Blackwell: Oxford.Google Scholar
Brown, G. W., Andrews, B., Harris, T., Adler, Z. & Bridge, L. (1986). Social support, self-esteem and depression. Psychological Medicine 16, 813–831.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cobb, S. (1976). Social support as a moderator of life stress. Psychosomatic Medicine 38, 300–314.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cochrane, R. & Robertson, A. (1973). The life events inventory: a measure of the relative severity of psychosocial stressors. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 17, 135–139.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, C. I. & Sokolovsky, T. (1978). Schizophrenia and social networks: ex-patients in the inner city. Schizophrenia Bulletin 4, 546–560.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cohen, S. & Wills, T. A. (1985). Stress, social support, and the buffering hypothesis. Psychological Bulletin 98, 310–357.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Cooper, J. & Sartorius, N. (1977). Cultural and temporal variations in schizophrenia: a speculation on the importance of industrialization. British Journal of Psychiatry 130, 50–55.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Dean, A. & Lin, N. (1977). The stress-buffering role of social support: problems and prospects of systematic investigation. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease 165, 403–417.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Faccincani, C., Mignolli, G. & Platt, S. (1990). Service utilisation, social support and psychiatric status in a cohort of patients with schizophrenic psychoses. A 7-year follow-up study. Schizophrenia Research 3, 139–146.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hammer, M., Makiesky-Barrow, S. & Gutwirth, L. (1978). Social networks in schizophrenia. Schizophrenia Bulletin 4, 522–545.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henderson, S. (1977). The social network, support and neurosis. The function of attachment in adult life. British Journal of Psychiatry 131, 185–191.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henderson, S. (1980). Personal networks and the schizophrenias. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 14, 255–259.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Henderson, S., Duncan-Jones, P., McAuley, H. & Ritchie, K. (1978). The patient's primary group. British Journal of Psychiatry 132, 74–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Henderson, S., Byrne, D. G. & Duncan-Jones, P. (1981). Neurosis and the Social Environment. Academic Press: Sydney.Google Scholar
Holmes-Eber, P. & Riger, S. (1990). Hospitalisation and the composition of mental patients' social networks. Schizophrenia Bulletin 16, 157–164.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Kapferer, B. (1973). Social network and conjugal role in urban Zambia: a reformulation of the Bott hypothesis. In Network Analysis: Studies in Human Interaction (ed. Boissevain, J. and Mitchell, J. C.), pp. 83–110. Mouton: The Hague.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lam, D. H. & Power, M. J. (1991). Social support in a general practice elderly sample. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry 6, 89–93.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lipton, F. R., Cohen, C. I., Fischer, E. & Katz, S. E. (1981). Schizophrenia: a network crisis. Schizophrenia Bulletin 7, 144–151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
McFarlane, A. H., Neale, K. A., Norman, G. R., Roy, R. G. & Streiner, D. L. (1981). Methodological issues in developing a scale to measure social support. Schizophrenia Bulletin 7, 90–100.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mitchell, J. C. (1969). Social Networks in Urban Situations. Manchester University Press: Manchester.Google Scholar
Overall, J. E. & Gorham, D. R. (1962). The brief psychiatric rating scale. Psychological Reports 10, 799–812.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Parry, G. (1988). Mobilizing social support. In New Developments in Clinical Psychology, Vol. II. (ed. Watts, F.), pp. 83–104. British Psychological Society/Wiley: New York.Google Scholar
Pattison, E. M., Defrancisco, D., Wood, P., Frazier, H. & Crowder, J. (1975). A psychosocial kinship model for family therapy. American Journal of Psychiatry 132, 1246–1251.Google ScholarPubMed
Paykel, E. S. (1983). Methodological aspects of life events research. Journal of Psychosomatic Research 27, 341–352.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Post, F. (1962). The social orbit of psychiatric patients. Journal of Mental Science 108, 759–771.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Power, M. J., Champion, L. A. & Aris, S. J. (1988). The development of a measure of social support: the significant others (SOS) scale. British Journal of Clinical Psychology 27, 349–358.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Sarason, S. B. (1974). The Psychological Sense of Community. Jossey Bass: San Francisco.Google Scholar
Shepherd, G. (1984). Studies in the assessment and treatment of social difficulties in long-term psychiatric patients. Ph.D. thesis. Institute of Psychiatry, University of London.Google Scholar
Strauss, J. S. & Carpenter, W. T. (1972). The prediction of outcome in schizophrenia. I. Characteristics of outcome. Archives of General Psychiatry 27, 739–746.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tolsdorf, C. C. (1976). Social networks, support and coping: an exploratory study. Family Process 15, 407–417.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Weiss, R. S. (1974). The provisions of social relations. In Doing Unto Others (ed. Rubin, Z.), pp. 217–238. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.Google Scholar
Wing, J. K. (1978). Social influences on the course of schizophrenia. In The Nature of Schizophrenia: New Approaches to Research and Treatment. (ed. Wynne, L. C., Cromwell, R. L. and Mathyss, S.), pp. 599–616. John Wiley: New York.Google Scholar