Demythologizing mental patients' attitudes toward mental illness: an empirical study

In an attempt to change the medical model attitudes of psychiatric patients in a direction more congruent with the radical psychosocial approach of their clinicians, an experimental group of 13 outpatients was exposed to a series of demythologizing seminars. As predicted, when compared to the attitudes of nontreatment controls (N = 13), on posttest and on a three month follow-up, results indicated that only the patients receiving the demythologizing seminars reported significant and stable attitude changes in the expected direction.