Social support in healthy and psychologically distressed French populations.
Social support is now recognized as a major determinant of physical and mental health. The purpose of the present study was to assess social support in two groups of French people, one consisting of apparently healthy adults recruited in the general population, the other of adults recruited in centres providing psychosocial therapy to people feeling lonely and isolated. Social support was measured using a French translation of the Sherbourne and Stewart social support scale. This scale measures the perceived availability of functional support in four dimensions (tangible, affectionate, emotional/informational and positive social interaction). The results indicate that the healthy adults have good social support, whereas those feeling lonely and isolated have poor social support. In addition, after six to 12 months of therapy, the centres' subjects showed significant improvement in their level of social support. These data could serve as references for studies on social support in different cultures.