Joseph Eyer’s research while affiliated with University of Pennsylvania and other places

homeostasis versus allostasis mechanisms of allostasis allostatic regulation of the immune response regulation of arousal pathology from chronic arousal definitions of health and approaches to therapeutics hypertension / psychoneuriommunology / iatrogenesis / health (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)

Modern capitalist social organization, through intensified, con flicted work and the destruction of cooperative, supportive forms of social com munity, causes a large excess mortality among adults in developed countries. This excess mortality is most strikingly evident in the comparison of vital rates for advanced capitalist societies whith those of undisrupted hunter-gatherers.

Natural time series and prospective studies are combined to determine the contribution of many causal factors to the business cycle variation of the death rate. The variation of housing and nutrition together accounts for roughly a tenth of the death rate fluctuation. Drug consumption accounts for about one-sixth, with 11 percent of the total variation due to alcohol and 6 percent due to cigarette smoking. Social relationship changes, both as sources of stress and as means of relief, account for the greatest part (72 percent) of the business cycle variation of the death rate.

The general death rate rises during business booms and falls during depressions. The causes of death involved in this variation range from infectious diseases through accidents to heart disease, cancer, and cirrhosis of the liver, and include the great majority of all causes of death. Less than 2 percent of the death rate-that for suicide and homicide-varies directly with unemployment. In the older historical data, deterioration of housing and rise of alcohol consumption on the boom may account for part of this variation. In twentieth-century cycles, the role of social stress is probably predominant. Overwork and fragmentation of community through migration are two important sources of stress which rise with the boom, and they are demonstrably related to the causes of death which show this variation.

The author reviews Harvey Brenner's Mental Illness and the Economy. Brenner works with time series data for employment and mental hospital admissions in New York State dating from the mid 19th century to the present. Briefly, Brenner's findings are that the mental hospital admissions response to a given degree of economic downturn has become greater over this time period, not less, despite the development of welfare, unemployment compensation, old age benefits, outpatient mental facilities, and community mental health centers. These data suggest that unemployment and income loss are powerful sources of social stress, and that their impact on the population has increased with modern development.

The total death rate for 15–24-yr-olds in the U.S. rose by a fifth during the 1960s. The rise was due to a doubling of suicide and homicide and increases of a third in fatal motor vehicle and other accidents (Fig. 1).A major cause of the rise in suicide was an increase in potentially overwhelming life problems, including increased divorce among parents, increased alcohol consumption and attendant family problems, increased illegitimate pregnancy and a relative decline in income for young people as compared to their parents (Figs. 2 and 3). Also contributing to the rise in suicide was a trend toward greater social isolation due to increased parental divorce and decreased marriage among young adults.Almost half the increase in homicide was due to an increase in homicides arising from “impulsive rage” during arguments between acquaintances. This trend presumably reflects an increase in underlying tensions as well as reduced impulse control due to increased alcohol consumption per capita. The other major component of the rise in homicide was an increase in homicides committed while attempting another felony, which may be related to the general decline during the sixties in confidence in and respect for societal institutions.The rise in fatal motor vehicle accidents was due in large part to the increase in mileage driven per capita, the increase in alcohol consumption and increased suicidal behavior. The most rapidly rising category of fatal other accidents was solid and liquid poisonings, particularly opiate poisoning.In order to study the stresses on young people in greater depth, we obtained diaries from college students. The most commonly reported sources of tension were all related to academic work (Fig. 4). Much of the tension associated with academic work was due to the students' fear of failure in the increasing competition for the most desirable careers. Higher levels of tension were correlated with minor somatic symptoms, which may well be precursors of more serious somatic illness at older ages.Taken together, these trends imply a deterioration in conditions of life with serious implications for the health of young adults in the U.S.

About 50 per cent of people in modern societies have blood pressure sufficiently elevated to result in increased mortality. This proportion is much smaller in undisrupted societies of hunter-gatherers. In most cases the elevated blood pressure in modern societies is associated with physiological changes characteristic of chronic stress. The difference between blood pressure in modern populations and that in undisrupted hunter-gatherer societies cannot be accounted for by genetic differences or differences in salt consumption. Two primary features of modern society which contribute to the elevation of blood pressure are community disruption and increased work pressure. Drug therapy and relaxation therapies for hypertension attempt to counteract the physiological effects of social stress. However, it is more appropriate to use the occurrence of hypertension as an indicator of fundamental social problems which need to be solved.

"Curso de planificación y Política de Salud"