Poor Health: When Poverty Becomes Disease

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When one lives in poverty there are certain living conditions and factors that are called environmental stressors and then there are personal stressors. These stressors are the factors that are believed to be causal in terms of the mental health and cognitive developmental problems that arise in children of poverty. When you think of environmental factors there are physical factors that have to do with living conditions within the home, there are problems within the neighborhood that affect the child, there are institutional problems within schools or work places that serve as stressors and then there are societal and relational problems that act as stressors as well.
In the article “Poor Health: When Poverty Becomes Disease” Claire Conway
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In the peer reviewed journal “Poverty and Mental Health Practice: Within and Beyond the 50-Minute Hour” Goodman, Pugach, Skolnik and Smith state, “Even in the midst of dense urban areas, poor people often experience a diminished availability of social connection that could provide emotional and/or material support. Such support is an important buffer against stress for individuals of any class, and serves as a major predictor of physical and emotional well-being for low-income families (2012)”. As people in poverty do experience less social opportunities and become less involved in society they also lose that potential support they could be getting from others. As said support is an important “buffer” when it comes to the stressors that are in one’s life so instead of having that level of support needed to get through the hardships they’re constantly put through, people in poverty instead are forced to go through things alone and thus struggle more often than not. In the peer reviewed journal “Poverty and Mental Health Practice: Within and Beyond the 50-Minute Hour” Goodman, Pugach, Skolnik and Smith state, “Attitudes such as these, suggesting a …show more content…
These issues then can lead to attempted suicide, substance abuse, losses in jobs, low levels of education, etc. In the article “Poverty, social inequality and mental health” Murali and Oyebode state, “Children in the poorest households are three times more likely to have a mental illness than children in the best-off households (Department of Health, 1999b). Poverty and social disadvantage are most strongly associated with deficits in children’s cognitive skills and educational achievements (2004)”. First things first the relationship between poverty and mental illness is clear and seems to have a strong correlation with children in poverty having such a higher likeliness of having a mental health issue. Now, all of these issues seem to be correlated with some levels of stress on the individual. According to Murali and Oyebode, higher levels of attempted suicides are related to those who live in poverty when compared with people from higher social classes (2004). This shows an indication of higher levels of depression within children living in an area of poverty. Schizophrenia a major mental disorder has been associated with poverty however its unknown to what extent. In the article “Poverty, social