Culture change and mental illness

Abstract

A study of the relationship of culture change to the frequency of mental illness in the outpatient clinic in the city of Cairo indicates that rapid industrialisation tends to produce significantly higher rates of patients who were judged to have serious symptoms of depression especially among village migrants who moved from their villages to work in the city's factories. A suggestive explanation is that the higher rates of depression are a factor of the social disorganisation associated with moving from the village to the city.