Identification of mental illness: Its consequences for rejection

This paper is concerned with the significance of recent changes in the public's ability to correctly identify descriptions of mental illness. Whereas other investigators have argued that increased abilities to identify mental illness may lead to greater acceptance of the mentally ill, this paper suggests that increased abilities to identify mental illness may very well have directly opposite consequences. Data collected in a small New England community revealed that the ability to correctly identify behavior as mental illness is associated with rejection, not with acceptance.