Stereotypes of mental illness. A test of the labelling hypothesis

A questionnaire to discover the existence of stereotypes of mental illness was given to 133 subjects. Three hypotheses were tested: 1. that a stereotype of mental illness exists, and is an accurate impression of the behaviour of the mentally ill. Both aspects were clearly confirmed, in that a stereotype was shown to exist which closely resembled the behaviour of psychiatric patients described in objective studies. 2. stereotypes of mental illness are sex differentiated. This was not clearly supported, and some of the differences perceived between mentally ill women and men might be attributable to 'normal' sex role differentiation. 3. the stereotype of a 'normal' woman more closely approximates that of a mentally ill woman than do the corresponding male stereotypes. Strong confirmation was found that the two female stereotypes correlate quite closely, but the male stereotypes do not. The conclusion is that the data are supportive of certain central labelling hypotheses.