Self-Reliance and the Inclination to Adopt the Sick Role

Abstract

Previous research has indicated a relationship between to adopt sick and actual help-seeking. The present paper is an attempt to discover how self-reliance, an important value in American society, affects this inclinatioin. The findings indicate that those placing strongest emphasis on self-reliance are least likely to indicate a willingness to adopt sick role. The relationship between self-reliance and tendency to seek help is maintained under several different controls, although introduction of a control for value on health acts to specify relationship. T hle purpose of researclh reported lhere was to investigate how self-reliance-a variable about which we know little-affects to seek medical help. In a previous study, Mechanic ancl Volkart advanced the to adopt sick role as an explanatory variable influenciilg how often individuals make use of mnedical facilities.1 They found that number of times that 614 males in their freshlman year at a Western University used university lhealtlh facilities was correlated with questionnaire indices of inclination and of stress.2 The first of these was found to be more closely related to visiting health services than was stress itself.3 The present study carries their results a step further by calling attention to self-reliance, a factor which may be regarded as influencing whether or not one will have a strong to adopt sick role. Inclination to seek hlelp is only one of a long list of factors found to be associated with utilization of medical services. The search for these factors lhas widened considerably in recent years with increasing awareness that there are maniy sick people who never seek help and are, officially at least, not classified as ill. Several studies have attempted to determine number of persons manifesting symptoms of physical and mental illnesses who never come to attention of medical experts. One of earliest of these studies was Peckham experiment where 91 percent of a preselected sample of healthy individuals were diagnosed as having physiological defects or abberations, and amnong those who felt sick 60 percent were not receiving medical care.4 Breslow, reporting on California Health Survey, notes that . . a substantial amount of illness does not come to attention of physicians. For example, about one-fifth of rheumatism, one-fourth of deafness and almost one-third of asthma and hay fever reported in survey * I wish to thank C. Richard Fletcher and Bernard E. Segal for their helpful comments on anl earlier draft of this paper. 1 David Mechanic and Edmund A. Volkart, Stress, Illness, and Sick Role, Am-ierican Sociological Review, 26 (February 1961), pp. 51-58. 2 Ibid. 3 Ibid. 4 I. H. Pearse and Lucy H. Crocker, The Peckhlatit Experiment: A Stutdy in Living Structure of Society (London: George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., 1943). This content downloaded from 157.55.39.129 on Thu, 28 Jul 2016 04:33:32 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms