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It is generally assumed that social support has a favorable impact on the maintenance of health and on coping with illness. However, results are inconsistent and even conflicting. This is partly due to conceptual and methodological shortcomings. In order to overcome these problems and to guide further research, we present a taxonomy of social relationships and a causal process model. Social integration, cognitive social support and behavioral social support are distinguished and related to personality, stress, coping and the pathogenic process. In the causal model we propose that social support is depicted both as mediating the effects of stress on illness as well as directly affecting illness. A meta analysis was conducted that related social support and social integration to morbidity and mortality based on eighty empirical studies, including more than 60,000 subjects. Data subsets revealed disparate patterns of …