The Effects of Occupational Status on Physical and Mental Health

In attempting to illustrate a soc-psychol 'al approach to problems of status & health, some past studies in this area are considered & a theory is outlined which seeks to account for some of the findings linking status & health, & new data relevant to the theory is presented. The studies reviewed show a reasonable agreement about the inverse relationship between SC & hosp'ed schizophrenia & the positive relationship between occup'al status & job satisfaction. Re other dependent variables - neuroses, manic depressive psychoses, psychosomatic illnesses, & biochemical indicators - the findings are much more puzzling & inconsistent. The theoretical approach favored distinguishes between subjective & objective soc environment & breaks down the concept of status into separate dimensions. In describing the person, the self-identity approach is used & self-esteem is a central variable. The major hyp'al steps in the theory are: (1) there is agreement about the dimensions which are relevant for the description & evaluation of jobs, about the relative value (desirability) of the various positions on these job dimensions, & about the description of a particular job in terms of these dimensions, (2) characteristics of job occupants are inferred from the characteristics of the job, (3) there will then be agreement about the objective public identity of the job occupant, (4) the higher the position of the job on the various status dimensions, the better the evaluation of objective public identity (ie, the higher the objective public esteem), (5) objective public esteem largely determines subjective public esteem,which then contributes to self-esteem, & (6) self-esteem will be related to diverse indicators of mental health. The f of visits to a free Co Med dispensary was used as a broad indicator of physical & mental health. The data on over 6,000 M employees from 2 diff Co's strongly supported 2 hyp's: (A) rates of dispensary visits will be inversely related to the skill or status level of one's job, & (B) supervisory responsibility will be associated with a higher f of dispensary visits. LT data, collected on a small sample from one of the Co's, supported all of the major steps in the theory. AA.