Network Structure and Reactions to Primary Deviance of Mental Patients

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Abstract
A network approach to understanding mental illness is offered as an alternative to the psychiatric model and to societal reaction theory. Some 47 social networks which had recently committed members to a mental hospital were examined by interviews with 199 network members. Patients are classified according to their status resources and the type of symptoms for which they were committed. Network properties include density, openness, ties among members and instrumental role structure. Network differences were associated with how patients'' initial unusual behaviors are defined, and the speed with which hospitalization occurs. Properties of social networks, rather than status resources or symptoms, provide better understanding of response to initial acts of deviance and actions leading to hospitalization.

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