The economic development and the resulting mass tourism since the Second World War have provoked in the whole alpine region an economic and a social change of considerable importance. The qualitative and quantitative aspects of this process should be of interest to the social sciences in general, and to social psychiatry in particular. The paper presented here deals with some results from a sociological-sociopsychiatric longitudinal study of socio-cultural change. The object of this longitudinal study is a mountain village in the alps which shortly after the construction of a road communication became a famous tourist station of world-wide renown. The study tries to examine the mountain village as a paradigma of the social change and the following psychological, psychosomatic and psychosocial difficulties of adaptation during the period of the so-called ‘cultural lag’. The factors and the manifestations, the actors and the consequences of the social change have been discussed. The economic change has altered the roles, the distribution of work, the culturally determined and traditionally learned patterns of behaviour, and the underlying pattern of values and normative attitudes. This change functions as a stressor and the individuals affected by this change are undergoing stress reactions. The most important parameters of this general stress and of the phenomena of inadequate adaptation to the social change are the raised consumation of alcohol, drugs and tobacco, and the psychosomatic and sexual behaviour disorders. How strong the correlations and interdependences between social change, stress and disorders of adaptation really are, cannot yet be shown in this study. Further data and information needs to be gathered during the longitudinal study to verify or to falsify the above-mentioned hypotheses.

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© 1974 S. Karger AG, Basel
1974
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