A study of occupational status, responsibility and authority in patients with duodenal ulcers, other gastrointestinal diseases and controls.

Five hundred and twenty-two African and Indian patients were studied, including 206 with duodenal ulcers, 25 with irritable colon, 51 with oesophagitis, 31 with pancreatitis, 14 with ulcerative colitis or Crohn's disease, 71 miscellaneous gastrointestinal diagnoses and 124 controls. The mean ages were similar in each group. Every patient underwent endoscopy and a detailed psychosocial questionnaire was applied. Comparison of occupations of patients and their patients was investigated on 3 scales, for Status/Prestige (9 levels), Responsibility (5 levels) and Control over Others (10 levels). Significantly more patients with duodenal ulcers were in the lowest group in terms of occupational authority compared to other diagnoses and controls. Similar number of all groups had been urban for their entire life. Stress was present in the 10 days preceding an attack in significantly more Indian males with duodenal ulcers compared to controls. Upward shifts in prestige had not occurred in African male patients with duodenal ulcers when compared to their parents but had occurred among Indian men. More duodenal ulcer patients were in the very lowest occupational authority category compared to other groups. It may thus not be occupational prestige as such that is important, but factors associated with it, such as lack of control over others and, among Indian men, stresses associated with social disruption following upon occupation mobility.