Social Mobility and Mental Illness

The hypothesis that social mobility is related to psychoneurosis and schizophrenia was tested as part of a large study on social class and psychiatric disorders in the metropolitan New Haven community. 2. Methods in studying the social mobility of 25 psychoneurotics and 25 schizophrenics divided between social classes III and V and a number of control subjects are described. 3. These psychoneurotics and schizophrenics are more mobile than the control subjects. 4. There is a discrepancy between achieved and aspired mobility in the psychiatric patients. 5. The implications of the above findings for phenomenology, etiology, and treatment of psychoneurosis and schizophrenia are discussed.