Stress, Social Supports, and Schizophrenic Disorders: Toward an Interactional Model

The present article proposes an interactional model of schizophrenic disorders in which three parameters of stressors (e.g. stressor category, stressor content, stressor descriptors) interact with four parameters of social networks/supports (e.g. structure, interactional properties, qualitative properties, functional indices) to produce a stress state characterized by positions along three orthogonal dimensions: overload-underload, positive-negative affect, high arousal-low arousal. The stress state, it is speculated, is reciprocally related to various clinical dimensions, functional system impairments, quantitative response parameters, and qualitative response parameters which constitute the "schizophrenic" disorder. The basic point of the model is that the formative, precipitative, expressive, and maintaining forces of schizophrenic-type disorders are influenced by the simultaneous interaction of stressors, supports, and stress states.