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Socialization, mental health, and social class: A Santiago sample

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Summary

As part of a larger study of social change, an investigation of a representative sample of 111 middle class and 64 lower class subjects of early adult age in Santiago, Chile, included several indices of mental health. As compared to the middle class the lower class disproportionately showed parental rejection, perceived their parents as punitive, and felt greater distance from their parents as well as recalling a less consistent and predictable emotional climate in the home. The lower class had also experienced less satisfactory relations with their siblings. Personal adjustment was more problematical in areas like isolation, self-control, paranoid projections, obsessive-compulsive tendencies, and schizoid symptoms. Emotional health as revealed in a number of symptoms also favored the middle class.

As a pilot study in the tradition of the Midtown Manhattan and New Haven research, most findings (although in some instances with borderline statistical significance in the chi-squares) confirmed the class relationship of mental health, at least for pre-Allende metropolitan Santiago.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, USA

    Robert C. Williamson

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  1. Robert C. Williamson
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The author wishes to acknowledge his debt to the Fulbright Commission of Chile and to the staff of the Sociological Institute of the Catholic University for their collaboration in this study.

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Williamson, R.C. Socialization, mental health, and social class: A Santiago sample. Soc Psychiatry 11, 69–74 (1976). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00578740

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00578740

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