Marital status and health: Descriptive and explanatory studies
Year: 1996
Type: dissertation
Abstract: DUring the last 30 years social factors have become increasingly important in the\\nevolution of concepts of disease etiology. In the beginning of this century the\\ngerm theory and its monocausal orientation, attributing single diseases to single\\ncauses (i.e. infectious agents), dominated medical thinking. However, the\\ngerm theory failed to explain why only some of those persons exposed to\\npathogens actually contracted the disease. In addition, the germ theory was less\\nappropriate for the explanation of degenerative causes of death such as\\ncardiovascular diseases and malignant neoplasms, which have replaced Infectious\\ndiseases as the main causes of death in this century. The monocausal concept\\nof disease etiology was followed by a multicausal orientation, which emphasized\\nthe presence of several interacting causal factors. Multicausal research Initially\\nfocused on biological risk factors, such as high serum cholesterol, high blood\\npressure and cigarette smoking in the development of coronary heart disease.\\nHowever, this approach also proved to be only partly successful in pinpointing\\nthe causes of disease. For instance, only a relatively small proportion of all\\npersons with high serum cholesterol and high blood pressure who smoke cigarettes,\\ndevelop coronary heart disease and many persons who lack most of these\\nrisk factors do develop coronary heart disease. Thus, other factors must be\\ninvolved in the etiological process. Groups differentiated by social factors have\\nlong been found to exhibit characteristic mortality and morbidity patterns. These\\nhealth differences between social groups (e.g. differences in coronary heart\\ndisease) were independent of traditional risk factors (e.g. high serum cholesterol,\\nhigh blood pressure, cigarette smoking, obesity). The idea that these differences\\nin health must be attributable to specific group characteristics has led to the\\nincorporation of social factors in research of disease etiology. One of the\\nsocial factors for which intriguing differences in health status have been found is\\nmarital status, which is the focus of this thesis.
Author: Inez M.A. Joung
Language: English
Subfield: Health
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1818351365