Beliefs and perception about mental health issues: a meta-synthesis

Feb 12, 2026

Yet the association between attributions and lower stigma was nowhere in evidence. “A disease like any other” formed the implicit or explicit message of antistigma campaigns, which focused heavily on education (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services 1999). As Rosenfield (1997) alluded to earlier with regard to the centrality of stigma in debates about labeling theory, the reality is more complex than either proponents or critics anticipated. Different vignettes elicited different levels of social distance in line with the gradients described earlier. But by 1999, Link and Phelan (1999) characterized the either-or debate over the power of labeling versus behavior as unproductive. Examining these possibilities was beyond the limits of GSS data but tempered our initial conclusions on comparisons between children and adults.

social attitudes toward mental health

Data availability

The Star vignettes were used in seven studies, reviewed by Dohrenwend and Chin-Shong (1967) and Bentz, Edgerton, and Kherlopian (1969), in which respondents were asked whether, in their opinion, the individual described in each of the six vignettes were mentally ill. The other three statements focus on the public’s actions based on their views of the mentally ill. This review of the literature investigates how attitudes toward the mentally ill affect their involvement in the community and what can be done to enhance such involvement. Social movements have played a crucial role in advocating for mental health awareness.

social attitudes toward mental health

Education-based interventions aim to increase knowledge and awareness of mental illness and reduce negative stereotypes. The UK campaign’s goal was to challenge common myths about mental illness and replace them with accurate information. Misinterpretation of these syndromes can contribute to stigma, as individuals might be wrongly diagnosed or misunderstood. Furthermore, cultural https://www.enterprisemagazine.se/nyheter/artikel/casinon-utan-spelpaus–ett-val-i-den-moderna-fotbollskulturen competence, which includes knowledge about culture-bound syndromes, has a substantial impact on treatment outcomes.

social attitudes toward mental health

h Century: Medical Model and Psychoanalysis

  • Other scholars have used similar strategies, including aggregation at the level of countries (Mojtabai, 2010; Evans-Lacko et al., 2012; Pachankis et al., 2014) or schools (Gaddis et al., 2018), or within categories of stigmatized identities (Quinn and Chaudoir, 2009).
  • Though the Qualtrics panel was a stratified random sample of the U.S. population, the social media sample was not representative, therefore generalizability is limited.
  • Prozac was approved for treatment of depression in the U.S. in 1987 and quickly transformed the world of antidepressants.
  • While we addressed the population of Münster via newspaper advertisement, posters, and flyers in public spaces, we reached out to the broader German population via Internet.
  • These findings support the notion that helping the general public recognize the true prevalence rate of mental illness could reduce personal mental illness stigma and facilitate help-seeking behaviors.

This stigma operates at various levels, including individuals, families, healthcare providers, and society, and cultural norms, religious beliefs, and social attitudes influence its manifestations and implications. In addition, misinformation can hinder public understanding and acceptance of mental illness, exacerbating stigma while negatively influencing policy and legislation, leading to inadequate funding and support for mental health services. Stigma plays a significant role in delaying treatment-seeking behavior for individuals struggling with mental health issues.

social attitudes toward mental health

The knowledge questionnaire was adapted from the study of Wang et al,19 which comprises 16 questions, and four modified questions about mental disorder treatment were also added, thereby resulting in 20 questions in total. This cross-sectional study measured the perceptions, knowledge, and attitudes of university students through online self-administered questionnaires and was conducted in a public university in West Java, Indonesia in January 2020. In addition, in 2016, Aruna et al’s15 study corroborated that the population of medical undergraduate students also had considerable deficiencies in knowledge and attitudes related to psychiatric disorders, especially in the early years of education.

Understanding this evolution helps us appreciate the psychological impacts on individuals affected by mental health issues. This demonstrates that cultural beliefs and values represent a crucial factor in mental illness. We believe these social marketing messages would be useful content for the planning stages of mental health services social marketing campaigns . The current study included lifetime previous mental health treatment as a covariate only (i.e. no interaction effects were tested with prior use) and therefore did not replicate the Diala models. Interestingly, we found no main effect of education level on mental health care in multivariate models; thus, targeting subgroups of education levels may be less effective when specific attitudes are not taken into consideration.

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