Social Rejection Linked To Later Health Outcomes
In the News (from ScienceDaily): “No matter which way you look at it, rejection hurts. Experiencing rejection from a boss, a friend, or a partner is difficult enough for many adults to handle. But adolescents, who are dealing with the one-two punch of biological and social change, may be the most vulnerable to its negative effects.
“In a new study published in Clinical Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researcher Michael Murphy of the University of British Columbia and colleagues examine the human immune response as a potential link between social stressors like rejection and later mental and physical health outcomes.
“There are many kinds of stressors that increase our risk for disease, but stressors that threaten our social standing, such as targeted rejection, seem to be particularly harmful.
“Many people are probably familiar with targeted rejection from their school days, when a student was actively and intentionally rejected by another student or a group of students. It’s the kind of behavior that we see in so many cases of ostracism and bullying.
“’Targeted rejection is central to some of life’s most distressing experiences – things like getting broken up with, getting fired, and being excluded from your peer group at school,’ said Murphy. ‘In this study, we aimed to examine processes that may give these experiences the ability to affect health.’
“Previous research has shown that people who are on the receiving end of this kind of rejection experience symptoms of depression three times faster than people who are faced with similarly severe life events. Researchers believe that certain inflammatory processes that are part of the immune response could be a link between targeted rejection and depression.
“The researchers note, however, that an overly productive immune response can be harmful to mental and physical health in the long run. If substantiated in future research, these findings could have implications for understanding how social conditions increase risk for a variety of inflammation-related diseases, including obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, certain types of cancer, and depression.”
My Comment: Undoubtedly, nothing is more harmful to our egoistic nature than a feeling of neglect. It causes violent feelings and physiological reactions that mobilize the entire body and make it capable of the most critical steps. There is only one treatment: to correct man and society!
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