MAD HATTER PAGE 2

 

 

HEALTH CARE —- UNEMPLOYMENT

Rising health care costs and high wmen-
ployment are two major problems Canad-
ians face in these recession plagued
times, but is there a connection between
these two highly diverse subjects?

Yes, says Douglas College Sociology in-
structor Aida Meshaka, who points out
that health care cost could rise sharply
if nothing is done to curb the rising un-
employment.

Meshaka, who received her Ph.D. in Soci-
ology from the University of Alberta,
says that studies in the U.S.A. and the
United Kingdom have shown that unemploy-
ment is linked to heart attacks, strokes,
liver disease, mental illness, suicide,
murder and other crimes.

"It can also be correleated with a rise
in mortality rates, and the resulting
deaths are not confined to the unemployed,
but spread right across the community,
affecting old and young, and even the
self-enployed," Meshaka said.

One of those studies included a report
on the social costs of economic policies,
presented to a United States Congression-
al Committee headed by the late Senator
Hubert Hemphrey. The study showed that
in 1970 the 1.4 per cent rise in unem
ployment in the U.S.A. cost more than
51,000 deaths.

Professor Harvey Brenner of Johns Hopkins
University, studied the cities of Liver-
pool and Nottingham in Britain, and ac-
cording to Meshaka, discovered that Eng-
land and Wales show the same relationship
between unemployment, morbidity, and mor-
tality as the U.S.A.

"For the United Kingdom as a whole, an
increase in unemployment of one per cent
meant a 2.1 per cent increase in the mor-
tality rate (over 17,000 additional
deaths)," Meshaka said.

 

SS SS]

"Those appalling figures have, rightly, |
led some people to compare wemployment
in the 20th century to the plague of
former times."
Meshaka currently teaches a Sociology of |
Health and Illness course at Douglas Col=|
lege. The course gives the students a
historical overview of medical sociology |
and the development of medicine.

It covers the concepts of health and |
illness, the various definitions and
criteria of illness that have been used,
and the consideration of illness as a
form of deviance.

"It shows that cultural and social class

factors are components of health and ill-
ness as well as covering the distribution
of particular diseases and their relation |
to such factors as age, sex, race, socio-|
economic status, industrialization and
social change," Meshaka said.

The impact of illness on the individual
will also be discussed along with the
social organization surrounding health
care.

For further information on this course,
call 521-6633.

 

SUMMER HOURS - REGISTRAR'S OFFICE

 

Monday 1000-1600
Tuesday 1000-1915
Wednesday 1000-1915
Thursday 1000-1600
Friday 1000-1600

These hours are effective until
June 18, 1982.