Opinions about Mental Illness

Negative stereotypes and stigmatizing attitudes against mentally ill persons have powerful historical roots in many cultures. The common perception of these persons, who are unable to defend their rights, is that they are dangerous, violent and unpredictable (Arboreda-Florez & Sartorius, 2008). This paper presents a preliminary investigation regarding the public perceptions and attitudes about mental illness using an adapted version of the Opinions about Mental Illness Scale (Cohen & Struening, 1962). The participants were 150 university students and the following five attitudinal dimensions were investigated: authoritarianism (the opinion that people with a mental illness cannot be held accountable for their acts and they should be controlled by society), benevolence (an attitude that could be placed between tolerance and pity/compassion), mental hygiene ideology (the opinion that mental illness is similar to other illnesses and it should be treated adequately by specialists), social restrictiveness (the opinion that mentally ill persons should be restricted in some social domains), and interpersonal aetiology (the belief that the real cause of a mental illness are the problematic interpersonal relations). The implications for the implementation of anti-stigma programs are discussed.