The effect of educational setting on student opinions of mental illness

This article describes a collaborative effort between the public mental health system and a graduate school of social work which holds promise for positively changing the attitudes of students towards work with persons with major mental illness. The paper reports findings regarding the extent to which hospital-based and conventional classroom-based settings effect graduate social work students' opinions about mental illness. Changes on subscales of the Opinions About Mental Illness Scale suggest that student opinions about serious mental illness can be favorably altered by conducting courses at a clinical setting. Implications for teaching prospective public sector mental health professionals are discussed.