Allan V Horwitz
Biographic Data
| ID | 91567 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Allan V Horwitz |
| GIVEN NAMES | Allan V |
| FAMILY NAME | Horwitz |
| SIGNATURE | HORWITZ A V |
| AFFILIATIONS | Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 66 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 743 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 66 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1977 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 18 |
Personality Disorders: A Short History of Narcissistic, Borderline, Antisocial, and Other Types
Two Sides of Depression: Medical & Social
Two models have dominated portrayals of depression. The medical model views depression as a disease that has distinct symptoms with predictable courses and outcomes. It typically relies on brain-related explanations and responses, although many adherents also use social and psychological causes and treatments. A second model conceives of depression as the result of external stressors, loss events, and other problems of living that naturally subsi…
Personality Disorders: A Short History of Narcissistic, Borderline, Antisocial, and Other Types
Between Sanity and Madness: Mental Illness from Ancient Greece to the Neuroscientific Era
Social Context, Biology, and the Definition of Disorder
In recent years, medical sociologists have increasingly paid attention to a variety of interactions between social and biological factors. These include how social stressors impact the functioning of physiological systems, how sociocultural contexts trigger genetic propensities or mitigate genetic defects, and how brains are attuned to social, cultural, and interactional factors. This paper focuses on how both sociocultural and biological forces …
Normal Negative Emotions and Mental Disorders
The basic goal of psychiatric diagnosis is to distinguish genuine mental dysfunctions from normal, albeit distressing, emotions. This task is especially difficult because, unlike other medical specialties, psychiatry does not have biological markers that can validate diagnoses of mental disorders. Therefore, diagnostic criteria have an outsized role in psychiatry compared to other medical fields. Until the development of the DSM‐III in 1980, psyc…
Therapeutic Revolutions: Medicine, Psychiatry, and American Culture, 1945-1970
Martin Halliwell's Therapeutic Revolutions traces the major post-World War II transformations in medicine and psychiatry through the lens of popular culture. To accomplish this ambitious goal, he uses an immense number of sources that include movies, novels, poetry, television shows, popular music, magazine stories, and government and foundation reports, as well as scholarly books, articles, ethnographies, and Ph.D. theses. Halliwell seems to be …
Michael E. Staub, Madness is Civilisation: When the Diagnosis was Social, 1948-1980
Michael Staub's Madness is Civilization is about an era that ended just thirty years ago. Yet, the views it features seem as culturally distant from current psychiatric thought as do such topics as phrenology, neurasthenia or magnetism. The book vividly evokes a period when discussions about the nature of sanity and insanity were at the heart of general intellectual debates regarding the essence of American society, political oppression and pathw…
Creating an Age of Depression: The Social Construction and Consequences of the Major Depression Diagnosis
One type of study in the sociology of mental health examines how social and cultural factors influence the creation and consequences of psychiatric diagnoses. Most studies of this kind focus on how diagnoses emerge from struggles among advocacy organizations, economic and political interest groups, and professionals. In contrast, intraprofessional dynamics rather than external pressures generated perhaps the major transformation resulting from th…
Naming the problem that has no name: Creating targets for standardized drugs
Sequencing and Its Consequences: Path Dependence and the Relationships between Genetics and Medicalization
Both advocacy for and critiques of the Human Genome Project assume a self-sustaining relationship between genetics and medicalization. However, this assumption ignores the ways in which the meanings of genetic research are conditional on its position in sequences of events. Based on analyses of three conditions for which at least one putative gene or genetic marker has been identified, this article argues that critical junctures in the institutio…
Better But Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the United States since 1950 (review)
Reviewed by: Better But Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the United States since 1950 Allan V. Horwitz Richard G. Frank and Sherry A. Glied. Better But Not Well: Mental Health Policy in the United States since 1950. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006. xv + 183 pp. Ill. $39.95 (cloth, 0-8018-8442-X); $21.95 (paperbound, 0-8018-8443-8). This book's title, "Better But Not Well," aptly summarizes its basic message. Richard Frank and She…
Response to Schwartz, Mirowsky and Wheaton
Mental Illness, Social Construction of
Social constructionist studies of mental illness examine how cultural conceptions of mental illness arise, are applied, and change. They differ from traditional views of mental illness because they conceive of symptoms as cultural definitions rather than as properties of individuals. Such studies address questions of how conceptions of mental illness emerge in particular social circumstances, which groups have the power to enforce definitions of …
The loss of sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder
Depression has become the single most commonly treated mental disorder, amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from this disorder every year and 25% succumb at some point in their lives. Warnings that depressive disorder is a leading cause of worldwide disability have been accompanied by a massive upsurge in the consumption of antidepressant medication, widespread screening for depression in clinics and schools, and a push to diagnose d…
Distinguishing distress from disorder as psychological outcomes of stressful social arrangements
Some studies in the sociology of stress conceptualize their outcome variables as distress, while others treat the same outcomes as mental disorder. This article focuses on the importance of distinguishing between the two. It argues that there are fundamental differences between distress that arises in non-disordered persons and genuine mental disorder but that studies of stress typically fail to distinguish between these conditions. The article o…
Transforming Normality into Pathology: The DSM and the Outcomes of Stressful Social Arrangements
The sociology of stress shows how nondisordered people often become distressed in contexts such as chronic subordination; the losses of status, resources, and attachments; or the inability to achieve valued goals. Evolutionary psychology indicates that distress arising in these contexts stems from psychological mechanisms that are responding appropriately to stressful circumstances. A diagnosis of mental disorder, in contrast, indicates that thes…
Prozac as a Way of Life (review)
Reviewed by: Prozac as a Way of Life Allan V. Horwitz Carl Elliott and Tod Chambers , eds. Prozac as a Way of Life. Studies in Social Medicine. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2004. 211 pp. $39.95 (cloth, 0-8078-2880-7), $19.95 (paperbound, 0-8078-5551-0). Prozac has become much more than just a particular psychotropic medication or a generic term for a class of medications: it is now, as the title of Carl Elliott and Tod Chamber…
Media Portrayals and Health Inequalities: A Case Study of Characterizations of Gene × Environment Interactions
The emphasis on the genetic side of Gene x Environment interactions can serve to deflect attention away from the important impact of social inequalities on health
Special Reviewers
DSM-III and the revolution in the classification of mental illness
A revolution occurred within the psychiatric profession in the early 1980s that rapidly transformed the theory and practice of mental health in the United States. In a very short period of time, mental illnesses were transformed from broad, etiologically defined entities that were continuous with normality to symptom-based, categorical diseases. The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Menta…
Modernizing the Mind: Psychological Knowledge and the Remaking of Society
Creating Mental Illness
Double Vision: Reply to Freese and Powell
Freese and Powell make a number of critiques of the theoretical assumptions, statistical methods, and use of variables in our paper, which raises questions about the typical use of the equal environments assumption in twin research. We do not find that any of their critiques modify our conclusion that the equal environments assumption cannot be taken for granted but must be subjected to empirical testing. We hope that our paper and the resulting …
Rethinking Twins and Environments: Possible Social Sources for Assumed Genetic Influences in Twin Research
A central sociological problem is the extent to which genetics and the environment influence human behavior. Studies of twins are a core method in attempts to disentangle and to determine the comparative strength of genetic and environmental influences on psychosocial outcomes. A critical assumption of twin studies is that both monozygotic "identical" twins and dizygotic "fraternal" twins share common social environments. Therefore, any greater s…
Becoming Married and Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study of a Cohort of Young Adults
Allan V. Horwitz, Helene Raskin White, Sandra Howell-White, Becoming Married and Mental Health: A Longitudinal Study of a Cohort of Young Adults, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 58, No. 4 (Nov., 1996), pp. 895-907
DSM-III and the revolution in the classification of mental illness
A revolution occurred within the psychiatric profession in the early 1980s that rapidly transformed the theory and practice of mental health in the United States. In a very short period of time, mental illnesses were transformed from broad, etiologically defined entities that were continuous with normality to symptom-based, categorical diseases. The third edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Menta…
The Impact of Childhood Abuse and Neglect on Adult Mental Health: A Prospective Study
This paper examines the impact of three types of victimization in childhood--sexual abuse, physical abuse, and neglect--on lifetime measures of mental health among adults. In contrast to research that relies on retrospective recall of childhood victimization, this work uses a prospective sample gathered from records of documented court cases of childhood abuse and neglect in a midwestern city around 1970. These subjects were interviewed about twe…
The Relationship of Cohabitation and Mental Health: A Study of a Young Adult Cohort
Despite the growing importance of and interest in as a living arrangement, little is known about the relationship between and mental health. This research tests how the mental health of cohabitors compares with that of unmarried and of married persons. It uses a cohort of unmarried young adults who were sampled when they were 18, 21, or 24 years old and resampled 7 years later when they were 25, 28, or 31 years old. We compare the mental health o…
Becoming Married, Depression, and Alcohol Problems Among Young Adults
This paper examines three questions regarding the relationship between marriage and mental health, specifically depression and alcohol problems. First, does marriage lead to improved mental health compared to never marrying? Second, do any mental health benefits of marriage primarily accrue to men? Third, what qualitative aspects of marriage are related to psychological disorder? We explore these questions in a longitudinal sample of young adults…
Ethnic Differences in Caregiving Duties and Burdens Among Parents and Siblings of Persons with Severe Mental Illnesses
The policy of community care for the seriously mentally ill increases the caregiving duties and resulting burden on families with members who have a mental illness. Ethnicity is one factor that might have an important impact on the caregiving duties family members perform and the burden that results from these duties. This study uses interviews with 78 parents and 70 siblings of patients scheduled for imminent release from a state mental hospital…
Unemployment, Crime, and Imprisonment: A Panel Approach
Despite the widespreach acceptance of the notion that during periods of economic downturn, higher levels of unemployment lead to higher levels of crime and imprisonment, the research literature reveals very little consistent support for the existence of such a relationship. Studies that do suggest unemployment causes crime and imprisonment have used methodological techniques which, especially in over‐time studies, could lead to the acceptance of …
Rethinking Twins and Environments: Possible Social Sources for Assumed Genetic Influences in Twin Research
A central sociological problem is the extent to which genetics and the environment influence human behavior. Studies of twins are a core method in attempts to disentangle and to determine the comparative strength of genetic and environmental influences on psychosocial outcomes. A critical assumption of twin studies is that both monozygotic "identical" twins and dizygotic "fraternal" twins share common social environments. Therefore, any greater s…
Caregiver Burden: Differentiating the Content and Consequences of Family Caregiving
Families of persons with mental illness witness the devastating effects of this disorder on their ill relative and struggle to manage their situation in a society that provides little assistance. During the past 4 decades, the characterization of these families has changed from causal agents who precipitate or exacerbate the illness through disordered communication: (Mishler. & Waxler, 1965) or an emotionally charged family environment (Vaughn & …
How the Negative and Positive Aspects of Partner Relationships Affect the Mental Health of Young Married People
The relationship between marriage and positive mental health is one of the most established findings in the stress literature. Few studies, however, examine the problematic as well as the supportive impacts of marriage on mental health. This paper uses a cohort of young adults who were sampled at 18, 21, or 24 years of age and resampled seven years later when they were married at 25, 28, or 31. It examines what factors are associated with the qua…
Gender Role Orientations and Styles of Pathology Among Adolescents
This paper assesses the effect of gender identity on rates of psychological distress, delinquency, and drug and alcohol problems among a representative sample of adolescents. It examines whether pathologies such as delinquency that are prevalent among males can be viewed as functionally equivalent to those involving the internalization of distress more common among females. As expected, females display higher rates of distress and males of delinq…
The Use of Multiple Outcomes in Stress Research: A Case Study of Gender Differences in Responses to Marital Dissolution
This study tests the hypothesis that the use of a single outcome variable distorts the mental health consequences of a stressor among different social groups. It uses the example of the impact of marital dissolution on the mental health of men and women to see whether rates of depression and alcohol problems rise disproportionately among women and men, respectively, who experience the same type of stressor. The sample compares 465 married subject…
Outcomes in the Sociology of Mental Health and Illness: Where Have We Been and Where Are We Going
Sociologists of mental health and illness have traditionally used outcome measures that they have obtained from other disciplines, especially psychiatry and psychology. These include official statistics, symptom scales, and diagnostic measures. Answers to the central sociological question of how social arrangements affect mental health might require the development of explicitly sociological outcome measures. This introduction provides an overvie…
The loss of sadness: How Psychiatry Transformed Normal Sorrow Into Depressive Disorder
Depression has become the single most commonly treated mental disorder, amid claims that one out of ten Americans suffer from this disorder every year and 25% succumb at some point in their lives. Warnings that depressive disorder is a leading cause of worldwide disability have been accompanied by a massive upsurge in the consumption of antidepressant medication, widespread screening for depression in clinics and schools, and a push to diagnose d…
Sequencing and Its Consequences: Path Dependence and the Relationships between Genetics and Medicalization
Both advocacy for and critiques of the Human Genome Project assume a self-sustaining relationship between genetics and medicalization. However, this assumption ignores the ways in which the meanings of genetic research are conditional on its position in sequences of events. Based on analyses of three conditions for which at least one putative gene or genetic marker has been identified, this article argues that critical junctures in the institutio…
Negative and Supportive Social Interactions and Quality of Life Among Persons Diagnosed with Severe Mental Illness
The Pathways into Psychiatric Treatment: Some Differences Between Men and Women
In this report we test several hypotheses on the different pathways through which ment and women enter psychiatric treatment: women in treatment should have been more likely than men to recognize perceived psychiatric problems, to discuss these problems with other people, and to enter treatment voluntarily. Data from interviews with 120 patients at a community mental health center are consistent with each hypothesis. Several implications of the f…
Caregiving as Reciprocal Exchange in Families with Seriously Mentally Ill Members
Allan V. Horwitz, Susan C. Reinhard, Sandra Howell-White, Caregiving as Reciprocal Exchange in Families with Seriously Mentally Ill Members, Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Vol. 37, No. 2 (Jun., 1996), pp. 149-162
Infidelity, Initiation, and the Emotional Climate of Divorce: Are There Implications for Mental Health
A large literature has examined the role of "secondary" stressors, such as problems with finances, social support, residential mobility, and children, in producing the well-documented association between divorce and a variety of psychopathological conditions. Much less attention, however, has been paid to variation in the "primary" disruption experience. We address this omission using data from the National Survey of Families and Households to in…
Social Networks and Pathways to Psychiatric Treatment
Journal Article Social Networks and Pathways to Psychiatric Treatment Get access Allan Horwitz Allan Horwitz Rutgers University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 56, Issue 1, September 1977, Pages 86–105, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/56.1.86 Published: 01 September 1977
The Role of Adult Siblings in Providing Social Support to the Severely Mentally Ill
Allan V. Horwitz, Richard C. Tessler, Gene A. Fisher, Gail M. Gamache, The Role of Adult Siblings in Providing Social Support to the Severely Mentally Ill, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 233-241
Distinguishing distress from disorder as psychological outcomes of stressful social arrangements
Some studies in the sociology of stress conceptualize their outcome variables as distress, while others treat the same outcomes as mental disorder. This article focuses on the importance of distinguishing between the two. It argues that there are fundamental differences between distress that arises in non-disordered persons and genuine mental disorder but that studies of stress typically fail to distinguish between these conditions. The article o…
Some Misleading Conceptions in Sentencing Research: An Example and a Reformulation in the Juvenile Court
Most studies of sentencing practices in both adult and juvenile courts have compared the relative power to predict dispositions of “legal” variables, such as the seriousness of offense and previous arrest record, and “extralegal” variables, such as race and social class. It is suggested that this is a misleading model for research on the decision‐making process in juvenile courts. Instead, results presented here indicate that the juvenile court u…
Predictors of Adult Sibling Social Support for the Seriously Mentally III: An Exploratory Study
Little research examines the reasons adult siblings might provide social support to unmarried, dependent brothers and sisters. This article examines how obligation, reciprocity, and the quality of personal relationships affect whether siblings provide social support to the seriously mentally ill. It uses a sample of 108 siblings of 85 participants in a treatment program for the seriously mentally ill to examine the factors that predict several as…
Adult Siblings as Sources of Social Support for the Seriously Mentally Ill: A Test of the Serial Model
The Legal System: A Social Science Perspective
The Pathways into Psychiatric Treatment: Some Differences Between Men and Women
In this report we test several hypotheses on the different pathways through which ment and women enter psychiatric treatment: women in treatment should have been more likely than men to recognize perceived psychiatric problems, to discuss these problems with other people, and to enter treatment voluntarily. Data from interviews with 120 patients at a community mental health center are consistent with each hypothesis. Several implications of the f…
Social Networks and Pathways to Psychiatric Treatment
Journal Article Social Networks and Pathways to Psychiatric Treatment Get access Allan Horwitz Allan Horwitz Rutgers University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Social Forces, Volume 56, Issue 1, September 1977, Pages 86–105, https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/56.1.86 Published: 01 September 1977
Marxist Theories of Deviance and Teleology: A Critique of Spitzer
Journal Article Marxist Theories of Deviance and Teleology: A Critique of Spitzer Get access Allan Horwitz Allan Horwitz Rutgers University Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic PubMed Google Scholar Social Problems, Volume 24, Issue 3, 1 February 1977, Pages 362–363, https://doi.org/10.2307/800087 Published: 02 August 2014
Family, kin, and friend networks in psychiatric help-seeking
Family, kin, and friend networks in psychiatric help-seeking
The Effect of Social Control on Delinquent Behavior: A Longitudinal Test
One of the central propositions of labeing theory is that an increase in the severity of societal reaction will lead to an increase in the rate of deviant behavior. This proposition contrasts both with the deterrence approach, which predicts that a stronger societal reaction will reduce the rate of deviant behavior, and with the motivational approach, which predicts that official intervention will have little or no effect on criminal behavior. A …
Models, Muddles, and Mental Illness Labeling
Some Misleading Conceptions in Sentencing Research: An Example and a Reformulation in the Juvenile Court
Most studies of sentencing practices in both adult and juvenile courts have compared the relative power to predict dispositions of “legal” variables, such as the seriousness of offense and previous arrest record, and “extralegal” variables, such as race and social class. It is suggested that this is a misleading model for research on the decision‐making process in juvenile courts. Instead, results presented here indicate that the juvenile court u…
The Medicalization of Deviance
The social control of mental illness
Sex-role expectations, power, and psychological distress
Resistance to Innovation in the Sociology of Law: A Response to Greenberg
The conventional understanding of law in everyday life gives a central place to legal rules. In this view-held by most lawyers as well as laypersons-legal cases come into being because someone's conduct has apparently run afoul of one or more legal rules, and cases are solved when the correct rules have been applied. The conventional approach also makes much of human motives, those of offenders, other citizens, and legal officials. These elements…
The Social Control of Mental Illness
Unemployment, Crime, and Imprisonment: A Panel Approach
Despite the widespreach acceptance of the notion that during periods of economic downturn, higher levels of unemployment lead to higher levels of crime and imprisonment, the research literature reveals very little consistent support for the existence of such a relationship. Studies that do suggest unemployment causes crime and imprisonment have used methodological techniques which, especially in over‐time studies, could lead to the acceptance of …
Gender Role Orientations and Styles of Pathology Among Adolescents
This paper assesses the effect of gender identity on rates of psychological distress, delinquency, and drug and alcohol problems among a representative sample of adolescents. It examines whether pathologies such as delinquency that are prevalent among males can be viewed as functionally equivalent to those involving the internalization of distress more common among females. As expected, females display higher rates of distress and males of delinq…
The Logic of Social Control
Becoming Married, Depression, and Alcohol Problems Among Young Adults
This paper examines three questions regarding the relationship between marriage and mental health, specifically depression and alcohol problems. First, does marriage lead to improved mental health compared to never marrying? Second, do any mental health benefits of marriage primarily accrue to men? Third, what qualitative aspects of marriage are related to psychological disorder? We explore these questions in a longitudinal sample of young adults…
The Role of Adult Siblings in Providing Social Support to the Severely Mentally Ill
Allan V. Horwitz, Richard C. Tessler, Gene A. Fisher, Gail M. Gamache, The Role of Adult Siblings in Providing Social Support to the Severely Mentally Ill, Journal of Marriage and Family, Vol. 54, No. 1 (Feb., 1992), pp. 233-241
Adult Siblings as Sources of Social Support for the Seriously Mentally Ill: A Test of the Serial Model
From the Mind into the Body: The Cultural Origins of Psychosomatic Symptoms
Court-Ordered Insanity: Interpretive Practice and Involuntary Commitment
This book, about involuntary commitment proceedings, focuses on interpretive practice at the nexus of legal, psychiatric, and practical reasoning. It describes the interactional dynamics through which legally and psychiatrically warranted decisions are publicly argued, negotiated, and justified
Predictors of Adult Sibling Social Support for the Seriously Mentally III: An Exploratory Study
Little research examines the reasons adult siblings might provide social support to unmarried, dependent brothers and sisters. This article examines how obligation, reciprocity, and the quality of personal relationships affect whether siblings provide social support to the seriously mentally ill. It uses a sample of 108 siblings of 85 participants in a treatment program for the seriously mentally ill to examine the factors that predict several as…
Caregiver Burden: Differentiating the Content and Consequences of Family Caregiving
Families of persons with mental illness witness the devastating effects of this disorder on their ill relative and struggle to manage their situation in a society that provides little assistance. During the past 4 decades, the characterization of these families has changed from causal agents who precipitate or exacerbate the illness through disordered communication: (Mishler. & Waxler, 1965) or an emotionally charged family environment (Vaughn & …
Ethnic Differences in Caregiving Duties and Burdens Among Parents and Siblings of Persons with Severe Mental Illnesses
The policy of community care for the seriously mentally ill increases the caregiving duties and resulting burden on families with members who have a mental illness. Ethnicity is one factor that might have an important impact on the caregiving duties family members perform and the burden that results from these duties. This study uses interviews with 78 parents and 70 siblings of patients scheduled for imminent release from a state mental hospital…
Psychology (53 works) · Psychiatry (39 works) · Mental health (35 works) · Sociology (26 works) · Medicine (22 works) · Social Psychology (22 works) · Political science (18 works) · Mental illness (17 works) · Clinical Psychology (15 works) · Mental Health Treatment and Access (15 works)