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NORMAN Q. BRILL, M.D.; HUGH A. STORROW, M.D.

Arch Gen Psychiatry. 1960;3(4):340-344.

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text PDF and any section headings.

Hollingshead and Redlich¹ have reported that patients in the upper social classes^* who seek psychiatric treatment for any type of psychiatric disorder are more apt to receive intensive, insight-producing psychotherapy, while patients in the lower social classes are more apt to receive short-term supportive psychotherapy, pharmacologic, or other somatotherapy and if hospitalized, simple custodial care. It has been emphasized that this differential treatment or discrimination is in part the result of the inability of patients from lower social classes to afford the more costly and therefore presumably preferred intensive psychotherapy.

If the economic factors were of primary importance, it would be expected that this difference would not exist in a public clinic which excludes patients who are able to afford private psychiatric treatment. With the economic factor eliminated, intensive individual psychotherapy would be equally available to all patients regardless of their social class. Schaffer . . . [Full Text PDF of this Article]

Author Affiliations
Los Angeles

From the Neuropsychiatric Institute, University of California Medical Center.

Footnotes
Submitted for publication April 20, 1960.

These authors use the system of class typing developed by Hollingshead. A person's social class is that of his family and is determined with reference to the education and occupation of the family head plus the location of the family place of residence. Five class levels are distinguished. These are briefly described as follows:

Class I: Families in this class usually have considerable wealth. The head of the family is highly educated and is a major professional person or an important executive in a large concern.

Class II: The heads of families in this group are college graduates. They are lesser professionals or second-line business executives.

Class III: The family head is a high school graduate with perhaps some further training in college or in a business or trade school. He is likely to be a shopkeeper, a salesman, a whitecollar employee, or a skilled factory worker.

Class IV: In most cases the family head has not finished high school. He is likely to be employed as a semiskilled factory worker.

Class V: The family head, who is usually not educated beyond the elementary level, works as an unskilled factory hand or laborer.

Hollingshead has also developed a simplified method of measuring class levels using education and occupation only.6 This method was used in the present investigation.

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