Social Capital: Social, Health, And Mental Health

In addition to the physical environment which is almost visible, invisible social environment is the other crucial part which is closely connected with culture. As long as you live in a society, there are various engagements with different type of communities, like relatives, classmates, and colleagues etc. Even you cannot see it in reality, it does exist whenever you participate in social activities, and communicate and build relationships with other members inside.
The term of social capital is then brought up to suggest that it is ‘‘the idea that individuals and groups can gain resources from their connections to one another (and the type of these connections)’’ (Paxton, 1999, p89). While Putnam regards social capital as relations between individual, social networks, norms of social

Some research observed that people who are provided with great social support possess better survival rates. Meanwhile, people would have better mental wellbeing from the emotional and psychological support offered by social capital, which usually focuses on terms like life quality, happiness or life satisfaction. It is suggested that high level of social capital is commonly associated with high social participation and behaviors among citizens, better public trust in other people, better political trust in community institutions, and better mutual generalized interaction. （Ghamari,2012）
As an essential form of social capital, social participation is one of the best explanations of happiness. Related with higher levels of happiness, psychological health, and self-rated health scores, as well as lower rates of heart diseases, cancers, and adult mortality, it brings people together, provides them numerous mutual benefits, enlarges their social network, and potentially increases their access to the resources that offer various livelihood benefits. Taking the studying of social participation and health in rural Malawi as an