Attitudes of psychiatric patients to staff roles and treatment methods: a replication and extension

A questionnaire dealing with attitudes toward staff roles and treatment methods was administered to a group of 191 psychiatric patients and their responses subjected to a rotated principal components analysis. The first three components accounted for the same proportion of the overall variance as did those obtained in an earlier study. The first components, emphasizing high regard for physical treatments and formal interpersonal relationships, were essentially the same in both studies. The second and third components, however, showed important differences; our second component dealt with the psychological and social aspects of patienthood, and our third reflected a critical attitude toward doctors. Scores on the first component were significantly associated with age, score on the Hysteroid-Obsessoid Questionnaire and social class. Women scored higher than men on the second component and scores on the third were related to total hostility scores on the Hostility and Direction of Hostility Questionnaire and to schizophrenia. Differences between diagnostic groups on the first component could be attributed almost entirely to the groups' mean ages.