Areas of Specialization

Social Networks, Medical Sociology, Mental Illness, Biosociology and Genetics, Children and Adolescents

• Perry, Brea L. 2006. “Understanding Social Network Disruption:  The Case of Youth in Foster Care.  Social Problems 53:371-91.
• Pescosolido, Bernice, Brea L. Perry, J. Scott Long, Jack K. Martin, John I. Nurnberger Jr., John Kramer, and Victor Hesselbrock. “Under the Influence of Genetics: How Transdisciplinarity Leads Us to Rethink Social Pathways to Illness.” American Journal of Sociology.  Forthcoming.
• Perry, Brea L.  “Taking the Medical Sciences Seriously: How and Why Sociological Research Should Incorporate Diverse Disciplinary Perspectives.” In Bernice Pescosolido, Jack K. Martin, Jane McLeod, and Anne Rogers (Eds.) Handbook of the Sociology of Health, Illness, and Healing. New York: Springer Publishing.  Forthcoming.
• Perry, Brea L., Bernice Pescosolido, Jack K. Martin, Jane D. McLeod, and Peter S. Jensen. 2007. “Comparing Public Attributions, Attitudes, and Stigma in Regard to Depression among Children and Adults.” Psychiatric Services 58:632-35.

Current Projects

Broadly, my research examines the impact of social forces on health, illness, and healing through a social networks perspective. More specifically, I seek to understand the interrelated roles of social relationships, social interaction, social structure, culture, and biological systems in disease etiology and the illness career.

I am currently involved in several projects. In continuation of my dissertation research, I am examining how and why social networks evolve in response to the onset of a major life event – the emergence of mental illness and entrance into the mental health treatment system. I employ longitudinal data to investigate how this transition both restricts access to existing ties and provides opportunities for new associations, altering network structure, function, and content in meaningful ways.

I am also part of a research team using data from the Collaborative Study on the Genetics of Alcoholism to identify interactions between genetic risk and social factors in the development of alcohol dependence and youth conduct disorder. In this line of research, we focus on the ways in which gene expression is critically tied to individuals’ interpersonal relationships, social network resources, and community integration.