... societal problem. An ordinary man may get depressed about being unemployed and automatically accept it as his own personal trouble. He will be condemned as being 'lazy' or 'work-shy' and labelled simply as a 'scrounger'. However, if there are thousands of other individuals also unemployed, Mills argues it should then be treated as a 'public issue'. Another good example of this is divorce. If only a few divorces occur within a society than it can be seen as person troubles of the people involved. If, however, masses of people are getting divorced every year than it can be seen as a public issue where institutions like marriage, law and media need to be looked at. Mills suggested was that these sorts of problems are interwoven with the large-scale problems of society where government policy may be involved and therefore are a 'public issue'. It is clear from this that what sociology focuses ...

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