Commentary on Retzinger

Suzanne Retzinger's article, "A Theory of Mental Illness," provides further untangling of the complex links between social relationships and psychopathology. Those links have been demonstrated in such diverse areas as the impact of family relationships on relapse (e.g., Brown et al. 1972), the predictive importance of social relations to outcome (e.g., Strauss and Carpenter 1977), and the genetic connections between social relationship traits and vulnerability to psychopathology (Kendler et al. 1982). The research presented here focuses on social relationships with special emphasis on stigma in those relationships and its impact on disorder. It also has the valuable role of forging connections between the more abstract labeling theory and the actual behaviors of people as viewed in their interaction.