Stress, social support, and schizophrenia. Discussion.

Three review articles (Dohrenwend and Egri 1981; Hammer 1981; Lin, Dean, and Ensel 1981) addressing various aspects of stress, social support, and schizophrenia are discussed. Phenomena so complex as these, involving simultaneously chemical, biological, physiological, social, and cultural systems, may require a different research paradigm than the simple unidirectional causal model used in most current studies. Perhaps a mutual causal paradigm will ultimately enhance our understanding by permitting more realistic assumptions about social processes. Three distinct network models are outlined: network as a set of links, network as generated structure, and flow network. Understanding of social support systems might be enhanced by the analysis of interpersonal resources in terms of categories discovered by Uriel and Edna Foa: love, status, information, services, goods, money. It is to be hoped that we will soon be able to work with methods and models that do not require oversimplifying assumptions.