Psychological status and the perception of primary and secondary support from the social milieu in time of crisis.

Abstract

The psychologically impaired apparently are more likely to seek secondary sources of help than the unimpaired in response to a wide variety of crises. (Secondary sources of help are denned in this article as those distinct from family or friends and for which one usually has to leave home and pay a fee.) This implies that psychological impairment predisposes to differential perception of social support as helpful or unhelpful for different types of crises Impairment leads to the perception of formal surroundings as helpful for a much greater number of crises than unimpairment. This implies that the structural elements within society are quite important to those whose adjustment by virtue of impairment is marginal While we can only speculate why individuals perceive one form of help as more useful than another, our attention is directed to the potential problem of knowledgeably increasing the social support structure, formal and informal, within our society so as to minimize the reliance of the impaired on informal supports which apparently have largely failed or been inadequate for the needs of the impaired person