Social Patterns
Sociology: AQA A Level, topic 5.4.2
The Social Pattern of Mental Illness: Gender
The pattern of mental illness is affected by social factors, including social class, gender and ethnicity.
Approaches
- Social realist and structuralist approaches to mental illness emphasise the social patterns of mental illness, while agreeing that mental illness is a treatable and real condition.
Women
- Women tend to be overrepresented in data on mental illness.
- Some mental disorders are seen as specifically female, such as anxiety and anorexia.
Gender socialisation
- Women are more likely to visit their GP for mental health conditions due to gender socialisation, more stressful lives and sexism, with feminists arguing that doctors are more likely to label symptoms experienced by women as mental rather than physical.
The Social Pattern of Mental Illness: Ethnicity
The pattern of mental illness is affected by social factors, including social class, gender and ethnicity.
Approaches
- Social realist and structuralist approaches to mental illness emphasise the social patterns of mental illness, while agreeing that mental illness is a treatable and real condition.
Diagnosis
- Some people from ethnic minority groups are more likely to be diagnosed with a mental illness than White British, for example, Black Caribbean men.
BAME
- One in five patients in hospital for mental illness comes from a black and minority ethnic group background.
Racism and stress
- The higher proportion of ethnic minority people being diagnosed with a mental illness might be the results of more stressful lives brought about by racism and social deprivation.
Ethnocentric psychiatry
- Another reason involves ethnocentric psychiatry.
- This is the tendency of the medical profession to view mental illness through the eyes of the dominant white culture.
Test yourself on Social Patterns
Which mental disorders are seen as specifically female?
What is NOT a reason that women are more likely to visit their GP for mental health conditions?
What proportion of patients in hospital for mental illness comes from a black and minority ethnic group background?