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Although there has been much research involving the study of the relationship between marital status and mental health among men and women, few studies have demonstrated this relationship among African Americans. This study examines this relationship among four ascribed status groups (African American men, African American women, non-Hispanic white men, and non-Hispanic white women) at the turn of the 21st century in effort (1) to include African Americans in the study of the marital status-mental health relationship (2) to bring research up to date using recent (2003) data, and (3) to more fully understand how structurally generated resources such as income and education influence the association between marital status and mental health among these groups. I find that the degree to which marriage reduces depressive symptoms varies by race and gender. Further, I find that resources mediate the association between marriage and depressive symptoms for black females and white males, while resources have an additive effect on the relationship for white women. For black men, resources do not suppress the non-significant association between marital status and depressive symptoms. Results of my study suggest that marriage does not equalize the distribution of the rates of depression between ascribed status groups. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is little doubt that the married are in better mental health than the non-married, the question of how marital conditions differentially affect individual mental health across the interlocking systems of race, class, and gender is relatively less well-understood. There are also good reasons to expect race and gender differences in the impact of marriage on well-being. For instance, financial strains may be particularly problematic for African Americans, because of structural barriers that limit socio-economic opportunities. In this paper we examine how race/ethnicity modifies the relationship between marriage and depression. Second, we examine how socio-economic status - income, education, and wealth - modifies the relationship between marriage and depression. Using the 2003 National Health Interview Survey, our findings indicate that the relative benefits of marriage for mental health vary by income, gender, and race. Our findings are consistent with the literature that suggests that the financial stressors associated with marriage may outweigh the benefits of marriage for men, especially African American men. Furthermore, because we find significant differences in the marriage-depression relationship our results reinforce the importance of examining how the intersecting systems of stratification, gender, and race influence the relationship between family roles and mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Archaeology is a historical examination of medical or social scientific disciplines such as medicine itself, psychiatry, and psychology. In this paper, I suggest that medical sociologists interested in the relationship between the human sciences (such as medicine and psychiatry) and human beings should consider using the archaeological method as first laid out by Foucault. For Foucault, this relationship is one of discourse. It is the discourse primarily of medicine and psychiatry that shape humans. The archaeological method can not only reveal this discourse in certain historical eras, but it can show where the ruptures in discourse take place. Therefore, an understanding of particular discourses could benefit sociologists of medicine in their investigations of the processes of medicalization and social control, as well as how medicine and psychiatry construct illness and disorders. But in this paper, I also explain some of the limitations of the archaeological method. I suggest that used alone, this method is only a historical look at discourse. In other words, researchers would not be able to understand how and why certain discourses emerged while some were dismissed by only using archaeology. Other methods, such as Foucault's genealogy, would reveal the force relations that allow certain discourses to be privileged over others. Nevertheless, by utilizing archaeology, medical sociologists can unearth discourses about what is considered inside and outside of the norm as determined by medicine and psychiatry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]