The British Journal of Psychiatry 136: 167-180 (1980)
© 1980 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
The spatial distribution of depressive illness in Plymouth
KG Dean and HD James
Diagnostic and demographic data were collected from all 2,298 psychiatric
hospital admissions for affective illnesses from private households in the
City of Plymouth for the six-year period 1970-1975 inclusive.
Intercorrelations of diagnostic subtypes were performed, together with a
multiple regression analysis against spatial and ecological data from the
1971 Census. Rate differences were related to the geographic structure of
Plymouth. With psychotic illnesses, ecological correlations were low for
male and female first admissions and for male readmissions. However,
important correlations relating to socio-economic status, housing tenure
and structure, population instability, and other sociodemographic features
emerged in varying degrees of specificity for reactive and neurotic illness
in males, and for all readmissions in females, largely irrespective of
diagnostic subtype. Explanations for the processes underlying these
patterns are offered in terms of population structure, particularly the
differing vulnerability of age and marital status groups, the referral and
diagnostic process, social and physical stresses in the lower socioeconomic
groups, and urban drift.
