Attitudes towards Patients with Psychosis and Depression in the General Population
Poster C1, Saturday, October 22, 11:30 am - 1:00 pm, Le Baron
Nina Schnyder1, Chantal Michel1, Benno G. Schimmelmann1, Frauke Schultze-Lutter1; 1University Hospital of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and Psychotherapy, University of Bern
Good mental health literacy (MHL) might improve help-seeking and compliance. But linked to biological causal explanations it can increase desire for social distance (DSD), especially for psychosis. We investigated attitudes towards patients with psychosis and depression in a general population sample in relation to labeling. 1527 out of 2124 (71.5%) participants of a telephone survey (age 16 to 40) returned a questionnaire on MHL and attitudes whose two versions varied in their diagnostically unlabeled case vignette (psychosis or depression). The type of the vignette had a moderate effect on DSD with depression predicting less DSD (R=0.337). The correct recognition of the vignette (r=0.120) and biological causal explanations (r=0.172) were significant but weak predictors of the DSD. While good MHL seems to improve social acceptance of persons with depression, it seems to extend an opposite effect on psychoses irrespective of a possibly biological main causal attribution. This has major implications for public information campaigns in psychoses that will have to be most carefully designed to avoid converse effects.
Topic Area: Epidemiology