Recovery From Schizophrenia: Psychiatry And Political Economy

HEALTH, ILLNESS AND THE ECONOMY 37small towns than in big cities and that this contributes also to the reduced effectof economic fluctuations in small towns.Another report confirms that rural residents may be protected by social supportfrom some of the health hazards of economic change. Comparing the impact onmanufacturing workers of plant closings in two areas—one rural and one urban—Susan Gore found that rural workers enjoyed more social support than urbanemployees. Unemployed workers who rated their spouses, relatives and friends asunsupportive had more severe psychological problems and symptoms of ill-health.They blamed themselves more for being unemployed and felt more economicallydeprived. Those who feel unsupported, argued Gore, are more dependent ontheir jobs for self-esteem, and when unemployed they are more likely to losetheir sense of worth. 59BOOM OR BUST?The early studies of the business cycle, we have seen, implicated the boom in theproduction of most social pathology, with one clear exception being suicide.Catalano and Dooley’s analysis of short-term economic fluctuations in KansasCity points to absolute economic change (up and down) as a source of stress andstress symptoms, and to a link between unemployment and depressed mood.When the news media cite research on the effect of the economy, however, it isalways the harmful impact of the depression and deepening unemployment that wehear about—never the boom. Why is this so?The commonly cited research that links economic recession to multiple socialproblems is the work of Harvey Brenner, an American statistician. Using complexstatistical techniques, Dr Brenner has pursued the hypothesis that the increase inproblems during the boom is, in fact, a delayed response to the business declinethat precedes it. Thus, when the US Congress asked for a report, in 1976, on theSocial Costs of National Economic Policy, Brenner was able to supply them with adocument, more than 200 pages long, that pointed to unemployment as having aprofound impact on health and crime. 60 A sustained one per cent increase inunemployment, claimed Brenner, has the following effect: