Attitudes to the mentally ill: A trait attribution approach

Summary

In order to investigate the cognitive component of attitudes to the mentally ill, a questionnaire based on the Stereotype Measure of Katz and Braly was administered to a random sample of 400 adults in Dublin. The results from the survey show that the public hold stereotyped conceptions of ‘mental patients’, ‘insane people’ and ‘neurotic people’. The neurotic are, clearly differentiated but the stereotypes of mental patients and the insane differ from eachother in degree and emphasis rather than in content. There is little evidence in any of the stereotypes of misinformation that could be corrected by education programs. Indeed, it seems that these groups are generally perceived in terms of unhappiness, confusion and withdrawal, terms that are predictable concomitants of being admitted to a psychiatric hospital. On the other hand a factor analysis of responses to the questionnaire revealed something of the cognitive structure of the public's conceptions and strongly suggested the existence of minority stereotypes. For instance, it appears that a significant minority of the sample perceive mental patients as violent and dangerous. An analysis of the effects of age, sex and socio-economic class on conceptions of the mentally ill was also carried out. The youngest group were shown to hold a generally more positive view of the mentally ill. Class membership was not a major influence on the content of the stereotypes except in the case of the lowest socioeconomic group, a substantial minority of which appear to confuse the mentally ill with the mentally retarded.