Chronic Social Stress and Psychological Distress in Russia. Risk and Protective Factors for Mental Health

For coalminers in Appalachia or textile workers in the French provinces, however, this proves to be excruciatingly painful. Even for big-city workers uprooted by urban renewal and relocated quite near to their former homes, the disruption is often agonizing. "It is quite precise to speak of their reactions," says Dr. Marc Fried of the Center for Community Studies, Massachusetts General Hospital, "as expressions of grief. These are manifest in the feelings of painful loss, the continued longing, the general depressive tone, frequent symptoms of psychological or social or somatic distress ... the sense of helplessness, the occasional expressions of both direct and displaced anger, and tendencies to idealize the lost place." The responses, he declares, are "strikingly similar to mourning for a lost person." Sociologist Monique Viot, of the French Ministry of Social Affairs, says: "The French are very attached to their geographical backgrounds. For jobs even thirty or forty kilometers away they are reluctant – extremely reluctant – to move ...»