American Journal of Community Psychology, Vol. 18, No, 1, 1990 Subjective Social Stress Indicators and the Level of Reported Psychopathology: The Case of Israel 1 Simha F. Landau 2 This study investigated (on the aggregate level) the relationship between the level of psychopathology in society (monthly rates of inpatient psychiatric admissions) and the population's perception of stress (expressions of worry or dissatisfaction regarding the general, economic, and security situation) and social support (national solidarity expressed as positive attitudes regarding relations between various segments of the population). The subjective indi- cators were derived from continuing surveys of representative samples of urban Israeli population during 1967-1979. Included were 12 stress indica- tors and 3 solidarity indicators. As predicted, general stress was positively related to psychiatric admissions, while security stress (due to its cohesive effecO and social solidarity were negatively related to these admissions. Con- trary to prediction, economic subjective stress was negatively related to psy- chiatric admissions. Theoretical implications of the findings are discussed. Israeli society can justifiably be described as an ideal natural laboratory for the study of the effects of stress on human beings. In addition to the usual types of stress experienced in all modern societies, Israelis are exposed to a number of additional stressors which, in their combination, are quite unique. First and foremost among these extra stressors is the continuous state of war between Israel and its Arab neighbors. Since its establishment in 1948, 1The author thanks Bracha Katz-Sheiban, research coordinator, and Daniel Fridman, for his assistance in the statistical analysis. The valuable remarks of the anonymous reviewers are much appreciated. Thanks are also due to Miriam Popper for her assistance in obtaining the data on psychiatric admissions, and to the Louis Guttman Israel Institute for Applied Social Research for providing the survey data. This study was supported by a grant from the Israeli National Council for Research and Development. 2All correspondence should be sent to Simha F. Landau, Institute of Criminology, Faculty of Law, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel. 19 0091-0562/90/0200-0019506.00/0 © 1990 Plenum Publishing Corporation