The Chicago School and Mental Health

One hundred years ago, sociologist Nels Anderson (1889-1986) published The Hobo, a pioneering account of the life of homeless men in the United States. Anderson was a graduate student at the Chicago School of Sociology, which at the time was the preeminent place in North America, if not the world, to study sociology. His book, The Hobo, was the first monograph of many to be produced by graduate students in the School during the 1920s and 1930s.

Anderson was extremely well-placed to research hobo life because he himself had lived such a life prior to coming to Chicago. He had ridden the rails, lived in shanty towns, and even panhandled as he traveled all over the United States looking for work.

While in Chicago, his focus centered on Hobohemia, where thousands of homeless men (and they were almost always men, according to Anderson) congregated. He used novel methods such as participant observation and and life-story interviewing to answer one of his core research questions: Were hobos made or born? In other words, were people genetically predisposed to such a life (as the many eugenicists of the time believed) or were they the product of an unfair, unequal society? Chicago School researchers were soon to ask similar questions about mental health.

Mapping suicide rates

While The Hobo did address the issue of mental health in homeless men, other Chicago School researchers would turn to this topic more directly. These included Ruth Shonle Cavan's (1896-1993) study, Suicide, published in 1928. Cavan used qualitative sources, including the diaries of individuals who had attempted or died by suicide, but she also employed another innovative methodology: maps.

As with Clifford Shaw (1895-1957), whose research focused on juvenile delinquency, Cavan mapped rates of suicide in Chicago. Here, she was influenced by Chicago School leader Ernest Burgess (1886-1966), who argued that cities developed in a series of concentric zones. The inner regions of cities, Burgess argued, were more impoverished, unstable, and chaotic, while the outer zones tended to be wealthier and more integrated. Cavan found that suicide rates also followed this pattern, concentrating in the inner zones of Chicago.

The link between poverty and schizophrenia

Cavan heavily influenced arguably the most important study of mental illness conducted by Chicago School researchers at this time, Mental Disorders in Urban Areas (1939). This study, conducted by Robert Faris (1907-1998) and H. Warren Dunham (1906-1985), also used mapping to a great extent. Faris and Dunham examined admission statistics for Cook County asylums, including where patients had lived prior to admission. They then mapped this data and, like Cavan, found that mental illness, especially schizophrenia, was concentrated in the impoverished and socially disintegrated parts of the city.

Their study helped to get psychiatrists interested in what social scientists had to offer the field of psychiatric epidemiology and led to many more studies after the Second World War. These projects, in turn, provided the foundation both for social psychiatry and what we now call the social determinants of mental health.

One hundred years after The Hobo was published, we still have massive problems with respect to homelessness and mental illness. We have failed to learn the lessons of the Chicago School, that mental illness is very often made, not born, and that if we want to do something about it, we need to tackle socioeconomic problems with much more energy and vigor than we do currently.

If you or someone you love is contemplating suicide, seek help immediately. For help 24/7 dial 988 for the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, or reach out to the Crisis Text Line by texting TALK to 741741. To find a therapist near you, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.