Social Breakdown

Abstract

Although problems of family breakdown, drug and alcohol addiction, mental disorder, suicide, and sexual deviation appear to be increasing, the available data are either so deficient or so incomplete that accurate appraisal of the situation is impossible. However, some of these problems seem to be more or less socially sanctioned adjustments to strains in the social system rather than maladjustments in themselves. To achieve our goal of maximizing the social health of American society, we must consider these problems as indicators of strain, and focus our national resources on the reduction of these strains. We need to improve the collection of data on these indicators, and to devise new ones, in order to identify and locate those situations which interfere with the ideal functioning of our social system. A significant aspect of social breakdown is seen in the inability of the society to mobilize for an attack on situations which it has defined as undesirable. Our concern should be with the identification of these processes as well as the underlying social strains of which social problems are overt indicators. We must estab lish standard definitions or criteria of social problems and increase the scope and accuracy of our data-collection. Infor mation-gathering on the local or state level would need to be co-ordinated on a nationwide basis to provide a useful set of indicators of the social state of the nation.