Evolution of attitudes of the population towards the mental patient

The research work we are presenting on attitudes toward mental illness among the general population of Vizcaya is, to a certain extent, a continuation of an investigation line we began in 1979.

We have used the same questionnaire as in 1979 (Cohen and Struening), slightly modifying it to adapt it to current circumstances with a completely random sample. Cronbach's alpha is 0.8236 and the confidence interval for the difference is 95%.

The attitude towards the mentally ill is better nowadays than several decades ago. This is probably because of the deep changes that have occurred in our society which has led those people who previously had a stereotyped attitude and were prejudiced to become more diversified in their opinions with full knowledge of the facts because of better information. Its factor synthesis explains 32.9% of the variation. The factors resulting from this work are: a) negative attitude toward the mentally ill (explains 14% variation); b) interpersonal/social etiology (explains 7.2% variation); c) authoritarianism (accounting for 4.8% variation); d) restrictiveness (explains 3.1% variation), and e) prejudice (explains 3% variation).

The population has a less magical and prejudicial and a more informed idea of mental illness. Thus the factorial contents are much more disseminated. Consequently, these factors explain a relatively low percentage of variation.