The influence of information on social and occupational outcome in mental illness on the attitudes of students in turkey

Background. In this article, we have tried to evaluate the influence of a s eries of determinants of stigmatization of mental illness. Method: 700 fina l year students of a University in Istanbul were asked to read one of 14 di fferent hypothetical case stories. The stories contained different combinat ions of characteristics assumed to play a role in stigmatization. Each vign ette was presented to 50 students. The stories were collected after five mi nutes and the following scales were completed: Characteristics Scale and Sk ill Assessment Scale. Analysis was conducted on each scale. Results: We fou nd a statistically significant difference among the groups given different hypothetical cases (vignettes). According to the post-hoc analysis, only th e subjects given the vignette in which social and occupational outcome info rmation were lacking showed statistically significant difference from the r est of the population. Conclusion: This study suggests that information on social and occupational outcome of mental illness influences the general pe rception of the mentally ill.