Attitude of society towards people with mental illness: The result of national survey of the Slovak population

Katarína Letovancová, Nadežda KovalÄ Ã­ková and Patricia Dobríková

International Journal of Social Psychiatry, 2017, vol. 63, issue 3, 255-260

Abstract: Aims: Our survey has been aimed at identifying the society attitude towards people with mental illness in Slovakia. Method: Selected group comprised 1,624 adult respondents with 18 years of age as the bottom limit. We applied reduced 26-item Community Attitudes Toward Mentally Ill Scale (CAMI) to the survey of the society attitude towards people with mental illness. Results: Average score reached by the respondents reached 94.0800 points, indicating lower stigmatization rate than presumed. Further investigation revealed prejudice and stigmatizing attitudes at significant part of the population. The survey confirmed statistically significant differences at the attitudes in the terms of gender ( t  = −6.559, p  = .000), age within the categories (χ 2  = 20.358, p  = .000), education ( F  = 9.137, p  = .000), socio-economic status (χ 2  = 50.487, p  = .000) and occupation (χ 2  = 47.989, p  = .000). We also confirmed statistically significant relation between the attitude and age (−.085**, p  = .001). Conclusion: The survey confirmed rather neutral up to slightly positive attitude of the Slovak population towards people with mental illness. Existence of attitudes burdened with fear was revealed in some cases, indicating the need for continuous education of the society in this subject matter.

Keywords: Mental illness; attitudes; prejudice; stigmatization; society (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:socpsy:v:63:y:2017:i:3:p:255-260

DOI: 10.1177/0020764017696334

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