Bipolar Disorder |
Low SES |
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Low socioeconomic status represents lower income, more blue collar, less educated than high SES. With lower education levels comes lower paying jobs, along with this is a low health literacy level. According to the World Health Organization (WHO), health literacy "represents the cognitive and social skills which determine the motivation and ability of individuals to gain access to, understand and use information in ways which promote and maintain good health," (Du pre, 2014).
Low SES and poor health literacy usually go hand in hand, not being educated in proper ways to understand what a doctor or caregiver tells you more likely to blindly follow orders without questioning. Low SES also implies that you are not able to communicate clearly with health care professionals. All of this adds up to not being on the same page as the diagnosing party and if they do not know what is wrong, they cannot properly diagnose the problem. Because there is not a specific test for bipolar disorder, the caregivers and doctors are relying on the patient to be able to articulate what is going on. Minorities of lower income are more susceptible bipolar disorder, but are harder to diagnose due to lack of health literacy. |
High SES signifies being well educated, of higher class, more white collar and professional. Higher health literacy is usually associated with a higher SES standing. A lot of the research done on SES and bipolar disorder tend to show that those who are of higher SES seem to be less likely to be diagnosed with bipolar disorder. In contrast to this look at Robin Williams' death from earlier this year. He was of a very high SES and was suffering from bipolar disorder. Bipolar disorder does not discriminate based on SES, but society does. A person who has been diagnosed as having bipolar disorder is judged less harshly if they are of a higher SES than of someone of a lower SES.
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High SES |