University students' attitudes towards mental patients and psychiatric treatment

Background: Public attitudes towards mental patients and psychiatric treatm ent are mostly unfavorable. Mental patients tend to conceal their illness o r selectively disclose their treatment histories to someone they trust. Aims: To examine the university students' attitudes towards different infor mation regarding a person labeled as mentally ill. Methods: We designed seven descriptions of a mentally ill person of varying past and current treatment histories and randomly assigned 308 university undergraduates to read one of the descriptions. Subjects rated their willin gness to interact with the hypothetical case using a 19-item social distanc e scale. Results: Greater social distance was associated with non-medical field of s tudy, no previous contact with the mentally ill and female gender. Subjects without previous contact with mentally ill individuals kept greater distan ce from a discharged mental patient receiving psychiatric care than a menta l patient who did not require medications nor psychiatric follow-up. In con trast, respondents who had previous contact with the mentally ill were more willing to interact with a discharged mental patient receiving psychiatric care comparing with a person labeled as mentally ill alone and a mental pa tient who had never been admitted to hospital. Conclusions: Implications of our findings in clinical management and design ing stigma-reducing programme are discussed.