Social supports, social networks, and schizophrenia.

This article considers the meaning of "social support" and its relationship to social networks, and discusses a structural approach to analysis of social connections in the study of schizophrenia. The concept of social supports is seen as methodologically more problematic and less strategic than the more structurally oriented concepts of social networks and social connections. It is argued that in terms of research strategy, if social connections are studied structurally as they change and develop over time, the impact of the specifically social processes can be better separated from that of the personal characteristics of the focal individual than seems possible with other approaches. Analysis of the properties of the networks around the focal individual, independently of that individual's own social behavior, can help to disentangle the interwoven complex of causes, characteristics, and consequences of schizophrenia.