Social support and life stress: a mental health consumers perspective

This paper presents the results of an exploratory study of the relationship between two conceptualizations of social support and the experience of stress, frustrations and use of leisure time. A correlational study was conducted with over 200 clients of community support services in a large mid-western state. For these mental health consumers, no meaningful relationship was found between social support variables and the criterion variables. The long term mentally ill were found to have small social networks. The authors argue that reducing loneliness by itself is a valuable outcome of service for this population.