 |
 |

A Race Riot's Effect on Psychological Symptoms
James R. Greenley, PhD;
David P. Gillespie, MA;
Jacob J. Lindenthal, PhD
Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1975;32(9):1189-1195.
Abstract
Certain individually stressful events have been observed to increase the psychological distress of persons affected; reduced psychological distress following other events has been attributed to collective processes, including increased group cohesion. These possibilities are investigated by contrasting reported symptom levels of 938 adults interviewed before, during, and after a racial riot. White suburbanites interviewed after the riot and urban black women interviewed during the riot report significantly fewer psychological symptoms.
Hypotheses of seasonal symptom changes, sampling biases, and the absence of symptom changes among relatively unimpaired respondents are rejected, suggesting that reductions in symptom level are associated with the riot. Serious methodological problems are raised by our finding that such events may substantially affect not only rates but also patterns of reported psychological symptoms obtained through epidemiological studies.
Author Affiliations
From the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison (Dr. Greenley and Mr. Gillespie); and Rutgers University, Newark (Dr. Lindenthal).
Footnotes
Accepted for publication March 24, 1975.
Reprint requests to the Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706 (Dr. Greenley).
CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us Digg Reddit Technorati Twitter
What's this?
THIS ARTICLE HAS BEEN CITED BY OTHER ARTICLES
Civil Conflict in Northern Ireland and the Prevalence of Psychiatric Disturbance Across the United Kingdom: a Population Study Using the British Household Panel Survey and the Northern Ireland Household Panel Survey
Murphy and Lloyd
Int J Soc Psychiatry 2007;53:397-407.
ABSTRACT
|