Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Secularization of Family Values in Ceylon

1957; SAGE Publishing; Volume: 22; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.2307/2088469

1939-8271

S. J. Tambiah, Bryce Ryan,

Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving

social groups which place greatest emphasis upon his doing so. In contrast, it seems to be no more difficult for schizophrenics who belong to deprived social groups to achieve the same degree of status mobility as controls. Whether failure to achieve in the middle class leads more persons to schizophrenia than does failure in the lower class, or whether schizophrenia tends to prevent persons from attaining a higher degree of success in the more highly competitive groups (the middle class) are questions which cannot be answered here. These data lead quite naturally, though, to the more general concern of the impact of urban socio-cultural pressures upon personality integration. Some social scientists studying one prestige variable or another have tended to impute a causal relationship between an individual's attempt to cope with such pressures and his development of mental illness. Psychiatrists on the other hand have more often rejected this interpretation from their clinical experiences. Bleuler 9 in his classic discussion of schizophrenia states unhesitatingly that he has never seen any indications that would suggest a relationship between or strain and development of schizophrenia, but that overwork is sometimes a symptom of the disease in its first phases. Bleuler also points out that overwork is often used as an apology for the patient's illness by his family. More research is needed into this complex problem. The differentials found in group matchings suggest the importance of longitudinal studies of schizophrenic patients and controls in various sub-cultures of our society. Aspirations of the individual and his parents in his early childhood, at his adolescence, and at whatever point his overt symptoms develop, should be taken into account. Further attempts to match large groups of psychoneurotic with schizophrenic patients and non-mentally ill persons is certainly indicated to ascertain incidence rates. Longitudinal studies on psychoneurotic patients in various sub-groups of the population are also in order. 9 Eugen Bleuler, Dementia Praecox or the Group of Schizophrenias, translated by Joseph Zinkin, New York: International Universities Press, 1950, p. 344.