Community attitudes to mental illness in New Zealand twenty-two years on

Three propositions about attitudes to mental illness derived from Nunnally (Popular Conceptions of Mental Health. Holt, Rinehart & Winston, New York, 1961) were examined with the semantic differential technique as it was used originally by Olmsted and Ordway (Final Report to National Institutes of Mental Health, 1963). Attitudes were compared between several studies using the same measures, that ranged over 22 years from 1962 to 1984. The results were remarkably consistent across all studies, indicating that the community had persistently negative attitudes towards the mentally ill and was no more likely today to want to play a major role in the care of the mentally ill than was the case more than 20 years ago. As a consequence it appears that there will need to be substantial and permanent attitude change, of a kind fleetingly observed over the period of the study, before the professional care of the mentally ill in the community may be expected to have maximum impact.