Familiarity with and social distance from people who have serious mental illness

Objectives: This study examined the effects of familiarity with and social distance from persons who have serious mental illness on stigmatizing attit udes about mental illness. Methods: A total of 208 community college studen ts completed three written measures about familiarity, perception of danger ousness, fear, and social distance, path analysis with manifest-variable st ructural modeling techniques was used to test a version of a model in which familiarity influences the perception of dangerousness, which in turn infl uences fear, which influences social distance from persons with serious men tal illness, Results: Most of the participants reported experience with men tal illness. Scores on the three written measures largely supported the pat h model. Correlations between the perception of dangerousness and fear as w ell as between fear and social distance were particularly strong. Conclusio ns: Approaches to social change that increase the public's familiarity with serious mental illness will decrease stigma. Further studies are warranted that focus on how contact between members of the general public and person s who have serious mental illness may be facilitated.