【Psychological Health】 Social support and physical and mental health relationship

What is social support

Social support was first explored and studied by foreign scholars. COBB believes that social support is some information, and this information makes individuals "believe that they are cared for, love, respect, and serve as a member of the network that bears responsible.

Cohen and Syme (1985) defines social support as the resources provided by others, including both psychological support and material resources, and these resources can help individuals well cope with psychological pressure.

Barrera (1986) summarizes the concept of social support from three aspects: (1) Social embedded type. Social support refers to the connection between individuals in the social environment and important people. It is opposite to social isolation and alienation. By measure the number of important friends, the number of relatives and friends who can provide help when encountering difficulties, or determine the social support of the individual through the social network analysis method; Cognitive evaluation of the relationship with important others; (3) actual support, social support is the actual help they can provide when individuals seek help from important people around them.

Social support category

CUTRONA and Russell (1990) divides society support into four dimensions from the content: emotional support, individuals feel the care and care of the important people around them, making the individual feel warm, understanding and trust; It will express the confidence and encouragement of the individual, point out the advantages of the individual, make the individual more confident; information support, to share information to help individuals solve the current difficulties; tangible support, provide practical support, such as funds and supplies to use materials to use materials with supplies with materials. Help individuals solve current difficulties, not just provide suggestions.

Haber et al. (2007) divided social support into actual support and perception support from the nature. The actual support refers to the specific support obtained by the individual, and the perceived support refers to the evaluation of the individual's subjective support.

The impact of social support on physical and mental health

Thousands of studies have affirmed the impact of life incidents (or social psychological stimuli) on people's spiritual and physical health. At the same time, some authors have pointed out that the relationship between social psychological stimulus and health is very complicated, which is adjusted and influenced by many factors. Under the effect of the same nature and the same size, some people have serious health damage, but some people have a lighter adaptation difficulty, and some people are safe and sound. Among the regulation of social psychological stimulus, the most important thing is social support, method of response and individual qualities (including physical fitness and personality, etc.).

As early as the late 19th century, French sociologist Durkheim pointed out that the loss of social relations was one of the important reasons for suicide.

As one of the most important social relations, the marriage relationship is studied by many authors as a rough indicator for social support. Susser (1981) pointed out on the basis of summing up the relevant literature that if adults lack a stable marriage relationship, they are susceptible to tuberculosis, epidemic colds, pneumonia, heart disease, cancer and other diseases, and suicide is more likely.

Berkman and Syme (1979) have a preview to investigate the relationship between social support and mortality in Alamda County, California. Social support includes four aspects: marriage relationship; amount of contact with relatives and friends; church relationships; formal or informal group contact. They found that during the 9 -year follow -up, all the causes of death were related to the first three factors of social support, and the cause of women's death was related to the latter three factors of social support.

Read et al. Research the relationship between 4,653 adult social support and ischemic heart disease, and found that social support is significant in the correlation with ischemic heart disease and acute myocardial infarction.

Lowenthal and Haven (1968) found that of the elderly, if there are close friends, it can effectively reduce depression. Henderson and his colleagues found in a large -scale social research, and found that the degree of dependence and social combination and the degree of adaptability and accessibleness were related to depression and neurosis.

Thomas et al. Starting from social support can reduce the hypothesis of stressing harmful reactions, and studied the level of blood cholesterol, blood uric acid and immune function of 256 adults. If social support is high, the level of blood cholesterol and blood uric acid is low, and the level of immune response is high.

Research on animals also shows that in the stress caused by the laboratory, if there is a nest animal or animal mother, other weak animals, or the appeasement of the experimental personnel can reduce the gastric ulcer of the rats, the high of the mouse, the mouse's high The formation of blood pressure, goat's experimental neurosis, and rabbit's atherosclerosis heart disease. Instead, the social relationship of animals, such as the simulated "social isolation", can cause obvious abnormalities in animal behavior.

In summary, there is a positive connection between social support and physical and mental health.

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