Moones Mansouri
Public Health 159
Dr. Schuster
10 February 2015
Take Home Midterm
1a. Pearlin’s three components of stress are stressors, moderators, and outcomes. A stressor is anything that can cause a toll on someone’s ability to adjust. A moderator controls the effect of a stressor, which includes coping. Finally, an outcome is how much stress an individual had from the stressor.
1b. The three perspectives on stress are symbolic interaction, structural-functionalism, and social conflict. Symbolic interaction is all about perception. It’s not about the situation itself but about our perception of the situation. We perceive things based on the environment around us and we learn how to perceive things from the people and society around us.
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Early epidemiologic studies, prospective mortality studies, and experimental research all have looked at the relationship between social relationships and health. Epidemiologic studies found social relationships to help buffer the stress effects. Prospective mortality studies show that mortality is affected by the absence of social relationships. Experimental research (and quasi-experimental research) looked into both animals and humans. In animals, the stress from the experiment was buffered if a living being was just present during the experiment. In humans, if someone familiar was around, there was a reduction in anxiety. The existence, formal network structure, content and quantity, and societal context of social relationships all are related to health. The mere existence of a social relationship, whether a person just has one relationship or many, can influence health and help buffer effects. The aspects of a formal network structure also can help buffer the effects of stress. For example, the density of the network, meaning how many of those you know also know each other, is related to your health. Another influence on health is the content and quality of relationships. The type of relationship is important Gender also plays a role in this because men only tend to have one confidant while women tend to have more. So a man will find positive supporting relationships from his wife to have more impact than a wife would. Finally, the societal context of social …show more content…
Social integration is your network. The more integrated you are in your network, the more support you will have available. It is also about accepting society’s norms. Social control can lead to health promoting or health risky behaviors. It depends on the person. If a person accepts the norms, then it can be health promoting.
3b. Strong social relationships have a significant influence on mortality over weaker social relationships. Survival rates are more likely. This was consistent among age, gender, health status, and length of follow up period. The degree of integration is more predictive than simple things like asking people if they live alone. Social relationships and mortality risk can be compared to something as dangerous as the relationship between smoking and alcohol consumption to mortality. It also has a greater impact than the effect of obesity. Therefore, social relationships have a significant effect on mortality and should not be taken