American Sociological Research of Mental Health and Its Enlightenments to China

By sorting out the existing empirical studies published in Social and Mental Health, aperiodical founded by the American Sociological Association in 2011, it is helpful to make up for inadequate emphasis placed on social factors in the study of mental health in China.It is found that the social factors affecting individual mental health are found to be chiefly external discrimination, social support, marital status, and educational experience;social factors exert significant impact on the mental health of adolescents, seniors, ethnic minorities, and minorities of sexual orientation;stigma and trauma also play a role in affecting individual mental health.The development American sociology of mental health is mainly manifested in the establishment of the mental health sociology branches and the establishment of the professional magazine;the research fields are becoming increasingly interdisciplinary;enough attention is given to mental problems induced by the inequality of the social structure;the macro social background information from which arise the individual mental health problems are taken enough consideration.Major problems are chiefly found in the following aspects:the research topics being too decentralized;some of the research analysis being too superficial with inadequate theoretical grounds;and the research methods being too scarce.Even so, it still gives us enlightenment for domestic researchers:psychological research needs to establish institutional mechanism;the research subjects need to be diversified;future research efforts should be directed to cross-discipline researches.