ECOLOGIC INVESTIGATIONS OF THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN ILLNESS, LIFE EXPERIENCES AND THE SOCIAL ENVIRONMENT

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Abstract
To evaluate the extent to which adaptations to the social environment affect health, the health patterns of 3000 people drawn from 5 population groups of Americans, Europeans and Asians were studied. Data relating to health were derived from comprehensive medical and personnel records of employers, detailed medical-psychiatric histories and physical examinations, psychological tests, and observations over periods of as long as 5 years. Data on life experiences and the social environment were derived from family histories, biographies, observations, and interviews carried out by sociologists, cultural anthropologists, psychiatrists, psychologists, and internists. Within each group, members displayed differences in their susceptibility to illness in general, in such a manner that those having the greater number of episodes of illness displayed the greater number of syndromes involving the greater number of organ systems, and arising from the greater number of etiological factors. Differences in number of illness episodes experienced were related in part to the fact that the more frequently ill people perceived their life experiences as more challenging, more demanding, and more conflict laden, and experienced more disturbances of bodily processes and of mood, thought, and behavior as a result of their efforts to adapt to a greater number of perceived challenges. The data indicate that physiological changes associated with attempts of the individual to adapt to changes in his social and interpersonal environment affected the time of occurrence and the course of disease syndromes of almost all types, had a significant effect upon the health patterns of more than two-thirds of these adults in the prime of life, and were significantly involved in the development of one-third of all the illness episodes experienced by these people.

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