Leonard Irving Pearlin (December 26, 1924 – July 23, 2014) was an American sociologist whose work focused on the sociology of

mental illness A mental disorder, also referred to as a mental illness or psychiatric disorder, is a behavioral or mental pattern that causes significant distress or impairment of personal functioning. Such features may be persistent, relapsing and remitti ...

. Much of this work centered around the "stress process model", a model he developed to attempt to explain the relationship between stress and mental health. He earned his Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1956. He worked at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) for over two decades, where he worked with such researchers as

Melvin L. Kohn Melvin Lester Kohn (October 19, 1928 – March 19, 2021) was an American sociologist and past president of the American Sociological Association. He was a professor at Johns Hopkins University and conducted research on social structure and perso ...

and

Carmi Schooler Carmi Schooler (1933 – May 11, 2018) was an American social psychologist known for his work on personality and structural equation modeling. Early life and education Schooler was born in the Bronx, New York City, New York, in 1933. He was edu ...

to study the sociology of mental health. In 1982, he left the NIMH to join the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF) as Professor in the Human Development and Aging Program, of which he served as director from 1982 to 1984. He was also the editor-in-chief of the ''

Journal of Health and Social Behavior The ''Journal of Health and Social Behavior'' is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal published by SAGE Publications on behalf of the American Sociological Association. It covers the application of sociological concepts and methods to the ...

'' from 1982 to 1984. In 1994, he retired from UCSF to join the University of Maryland as a Graduate Professor and Senior Research Scientist; he remained a professor there until his retirement in 2007. In 2000, he and his wife, Gerrie, established the Leonard I. Pearlin Award for Distinguished Contributions to the Sociological Study of Mental Health, which is given by the Section on the Sociology of Mental Health of the

American Sociological Association The American Sociological Association (ASA) is a non-profit organization dedicated to advancing the discipline and profession of sociology. Founded in December 1905 as the American Sociological Society at Johns Hopkins University by a group of fif ...

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Further reading