The Ecological Approach in Social Psychiatry

The search for differences in the frequency of mental illness in population groups ecologically defined is based upon a number of assumptions which are not wholly tenable yet not completely lacking in validity. The distributions found in ecological research may be explained in terms of three divergent frames of reference: the genetic, the interactional (as exemplified by the hypothesis of social isolation), and the cultural (exemplified in the view that social classes represent subcultures which differ with respect to both child socialization and types of stress), The major problem for futher research is to establish under what circumstances factors involved in any of these hypotheses actually contribute to the production of mental illness.