Lower socioeconomic classes

Throughout the world, the lifetime prevalence of schizophrenia is about 1%. Although the prevalence is slightly higher in the lower socioeconomic classes, data from a number of countries indicate that the social class distribution of the parents of schizophrenic probands is similar to that of the general population ( 16,17 and 18). This supports the social drift hypothesis, which postulates that the increased concentration of patients with schizophrenia in the lower socioeconomic stratum is the result of their impaired functioning. 

In the next chapter I will discuss the impact of socioeconomic factors on the fetal environment. Such factors are not minor, they re numerous, and they vary widely in character and intensity. It s not a surprise that these factors, most prevalent in lower socioeconomic classes, will overshadow any genotype contribution to IQ variance. 

The Turkheimer study discussed in chapter 10 pointed out that correlations between heredity or environment and IQ are dependent on socioeconomic class, with environment contributing nearly all the variance for the lower socioeconomic class.81 The study shows us that the contributions of heredity and environment to variance of IQ scores depend on the socioeconomic class of the population tested. The Flynn effect shows us that distributions of IQ scores are artifacts of test construction and depend on the generation tested. Both effects are of great importance for social policy. 

I cite these reports not as examples of the unfortunate abuses of the mental hospital system in need of correction by an enlightened citizenry, but rather as characteristic examples of a pervasive psychiatric pattern of harassment, intimidation, and degradation, authenticating the right of certain social authorities to cast individuals, especially from the lower socioeconomic classes, into the role of mental patient. To maintain that a social institution suffers from certain abuses is to imply that it has certain other desirable or good uses. This, in my opinion, has been the fatal weakness of... 

Erom a probabilistic approach it should be possible to derive the exposure for any age group or any percentile, as shown for example in Eig. 6.3. In Eig. 6.3, upper and lower limits are represented by the line either side of the mean estimate represented by the diamond. In addition the effect of gender, socioeconomic class, ethnicity, etc., can be evaluated, provided they have been identified in the food intake survey, although as the group studied becomes smaller greater uncertainties inevitably arise. Exposure can be expressed as mg/kg actual body weight or mg/person/day or mg/kg diet. 

There is sometimes a sense of shame combined with this fear. A middle-class parent might have thought that only families of lower socioeconomic status could get lead poisoning and feel that they have failed to keep up a level of care for their children that is expected of a middle-class family. The idea that only poor inner-city children can be lead poisoned is a myth. Families of all social classes fall victim to the disease. 

An important consideration is due to certain factors which have been identified in the causation of these disorders and which are often neglected by commentators, namely the socioeconomic determinants of chronic respiratory disorders (AO, 42, 43). Differences of large magnitude underscore much higher mortality for the lower soclo-economical classes, in respect to better economy groups, in men and women. Morbidity figures are similarly affected, with disproportlonal frequencies encountered... 

Most of our subjects are middle to upper-middle class white infants, for whom socioeconomic status and quality of caregiving are at most only weakly associated with prenatal or postnatal blood lead levels (Bellinger et al, 1985b, 1986b). They do not display the typical association between demographic/ economic risk factors and increased lead exposure seen in most samples. As a consequence, the likelihood of observing a spurious association between elevated lead exposure and poor outcome is lower in this sample than it is in most samples recruited to study the developmental impact of lead. 

---