Attitudes towards mentally ill in relation with education and age

Abstract

ABSTRACT Quick discharge from mental hospitals into the community is a policy called deinstitutionalization» Community-based treatment of mentally ill gained importance with this policy. Because of the benefits, especially for the.. '..practical and economical ones, community-based approach has special importance for Turkey, as a developing country, [Public acceptance appeared as the most essential component for the succesfull reintegration of the former patients into the community, for the appropriate usage of the psychiatric facilities, and for the success of deinstitutionalization policies. In related literature negative attitudes were widely observed towards the mentally ill, despite the requirement for public acceptance. Two mostly researched factors that are found to vary with different attitudes are age and education. Thus, in the present study attitudes towards formerly hospitalized and its relationship with education and age have been examined. The data were collected by using a questionaire which was VIdesigned to measure attitudes through social distance concept with situationally *. specific questions t in order to handle prediction of overt behaviors better. At first, data were collected from 59 subjects in order to check the reliability of the questionaire and it was found that the present questionaire can be used as a reliable measurement device. Then, data were collected from 330 subjects as the main sample of the present study. These subjects were selected from 4 different age groups (17-19, 25-29, 35-39, 50 and above) and from 4 different educational levels (primary, secondary, high school and university graduates) of İzmir1 s adult population.1 The data analyses pointed out situational specificity of the attitudes towards mentally ill. A tendency to require more social distance for some settings than some others and some differences among items in terms of intimacy were revealed by the data analyses Therefore, a judge group was used to group items as `intimate` and `non-intimate * } 7 of the 15 items were grouped as ` intimate ts and the remaining items as `non-intimate`. Thus 9 analyses were carried out interms of `whole scale`,.»intimate`, and `non-intimate` social distance a It was found that, education does make difference and age does not make any difference on the required social distance towards a formerly hospitalized in -terms of `whole scale`, `intimate`, and `non-intimate` social distance. It can be said that, `positive` attitudes increases as educational attainment increases and at the time of secondary school attitudes towards mentally ill becomes stabilized. Additionally, females seem to have a tendency to require greater social distance than males towards a male former patient in terms of `intimate` items, and it can be concluded that, sex of the target person may lead to this difference. Despite of the relevant literature, data analyses revealed a high degree of acceptance. The conclusions related to this finding were generally based on the following plausible alternatives: `highly positive` attitudes of Izmir's adult population, `social desirability`, and `rating style` of the measuring instrument. It can be said that more research is clearly needed VJ.XAin the area of the attitudes, since there are possible effects of attitudes (e.g. on self concept, on legal and economic conditions, on help seeking behavior * on social reintegration of former patients, etc. ) which needs further clarification. İA