ALONE IN THE CROWD - HOW ADULTS WITH LEARNING-DIFFICULTIES COPE WITH SOCIAL NETWORKS PROBLEMS

The relationship between perceived social support and mental health ha s been the subject of a large quantitative research effort. However, q uantification leads to inevitable oversimplification of multidimension al, intersubjective and contextual features of social support. The pre sent paper explores qualitatively the social networks of six adults wi th learning difficulties (adults), selected from a sample of 32 becaus e of the strategies they used to manage their social worlds. Three adu lts, who lived with parents, attempted to sustain non-confirmed identi ties in the face of rejection by others. The other three adults, who w ere separated from their families, had adopted fatalistic attitudes, d espite feeling socially isolated and unsupported. The paper argues tha t non-confirmed identity maintenance and fatalism are both responses t o social contexts that do not support an individual's sense of self-wo rth. The former is an attempt to manufacture positive identity in the absence of consensual alternatives. The latter involves acceptance of a social world that does not sustain valued social identities. The pap er explores in detail the social contexts in which adults attempted to maintain non-confirmed identities or adopted fatalistic attitudes. Th e research provides a perspective on the management of behaviour defin ed from a frame of reference external to the individual as ''challengi ng'' or ''problematic''. Carers saw adults who sustained non-confirmed identities as having behaviour problems. However, these problems aros e from adults' attempts to maintain self-esteem in stigmatising social contexts. The fatalistic adults did not cause behaviour ''problems'' for carers, but only because they had accepted lives which did not giv e them any sources of positive self-esteem. Copyright (C) 1997 Elsevie r Science Ltd