num_pages: 300
description: Faris, R. E. L., &amp; Dunham, H. W. (1939). Mental disorders in urban an ecological study of schizophrenia and other psychoses. Oxford, Univ. Chicago Press. Abstract This study of 34,864 cases of mental disorder admitted to 4 state hospitals and 8 private sanitariums in Chicago during the period 1922-1934 by means of ecological mapping reveals a close relationship between insanity and the ecological structure of the city. The rates of incidence per 100,000 of population decrease steadily from 362 in the disorganized areas near the center of the city to 55.4 in the residential sections near the outskirts. Schizophrenia alone shows a similar distribution, but manic-depressive insanity is randomly distributed. Study of the sub-types of schizophrenia shows that the catatonic states come principally from the foreign-born and negro slum areas where poverty and culture conflict are combined, while the paranoid and hebephrenic types find their highest incidence in the rooming-house areas of the city where the primary group has broken down and individuals live in social isolation. High incidence of alcoholic psychoses and drug addiction is identified with zones of transition and poverty, and of general paralysis with "hobohemia" and rooming-house areas where there is a disproportion of the sexes and low income. Senile psychoses and psychosis with arteriosclerosis do not fit the ecological structure of the city so well as do the schizophrenic rates, but relatively high rates are found in the central slum and negro communities. A similar study of the incidence of mental disorder in Providence, R. I., confirms in general the findings in Chicago.
language: English
title: Mental Disorders in Urban Areas: An Ecological Study of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses
titlecomplete: Mental Disorders in Urban Areas: An Ecological Study of Schizophrenia and Other Psychoses
publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr