The Stress Process and the Social Distribution of Depression
1999/12/01 by R. Jay Turner, Donald A. Lloyd · 594 citations
Psychology · Social Sciences · #Clinical psychology #Cognition #Coping (psychology) #Demography #Depression (economics) #Depressive symptoms #Developmental psychology #Health disparities and outcomes #Marital status #Mediation #Mental Health Research Topics #Mental Health Treatment and Access #Mental health #Population #Psychiatry #Psychology #Social stress #Socioeconomic status
paper · doi:10.2307/2676332
published in Journal of Health and Social Behavior 40(4), 374 (SAGE Publishing)
openalex publication_date 1999/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Abstract
Mental health generally and depression in particular have been repeatedly shown to vary in relation to gender, socioeconomic status, marital status, and age. These status differences may be linked to mental health because they tend to define important differences in stress exposure and in the availability of coping resources. This paper examines the capacity of the stress-process model to account for the social distribution of depression. We employ mediation analyses using data from a 1990-1991 survey of Toronto community residents. In general, we found hypothesized risk factors to vary across these statuses with depressive symptoms and disorder and the distribution of protective factors to vary inversely. Results indicate that the model as expressed in our analyses accounts for a substantial minority of observed depression differences across individuals and for a considerable portion of reliably observed variation across social statuses. Our findings with respect to major depressive disorder parallel those for depressive symptomatology. Most compelling is the nearly total explanation of the socioeconomic status association with depressive symptoms and the substantial contribution toward explaining the socioeconomic status-disorder relationship when stress process mediators are accounted for.
Citations
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