Objectives: To assess the public's recognition of mental disorders and their beliefs about the effectiveness of various treatments (“mental health literacy”). Design: A cross‐sectional survey, in 1995, with structured interviews using vignettes of a person with either depression or schizophrenia. Participants: A representative national sample of 2031 individuals aged 18–74 years; 1010 participants were questioned about the depression vignette and 1021 about the schizophrenia vignette. Results: Most of the participants recognised the presence of some sort of mental disorder: 72% for the depression vignette (correctly labelled as depression by 39%) and 84% for the schizophrenia vignette (correctly labelled by 27%). When various people were rated as likely to be helpful or harmful for the person described in the vignette for depression, general practitioners (83%) and counsellors (74%) were most often rated as helpful, with psychiatrists (51%) and psychologists (49%) less so. Corresponding data for the schizophrenia vignette were: counsellors (81%), GPs (74%), psychiatrists (71%) and psychologists (62%). Many standard psychiatric treatments (antidepressants, antipsychotics, electroconvulsive therapy, admission to a psychiatric ward) were more often rated as harmful than helpful, and some nonstandard treatments were rated highly (increased physical or social activity, relaxation and stress management, reading about people with similar problems). Vitamins and special diets were more often rated as helpful than were antidepressants and antipsychotics. Conclusion: If mental disorders are to be recognised early in the community and appropriate intervention sought, the level of mental health literacy needs to be raised. Further, public understanding of psychiatric treatments can be considerably improved.

SYNOPSISThe IQCODE is a questionnaire which asks an informant about changes in an elderly person's everyday cognitive function. The questionnaire aims to assess cognitive decline independent of pre-morbid ability. In the present study, the IQCODE was administered to a sample of 613 informants from the general population. In addition, the questionnaire was administered to informants of 309 dementing subjects who had filled it out one year previously. A principal components analysis, using the general population sample, confirmed that the IQCODE measures a general factor of cognitive decline. The questionnaire was found to have high internal reliability in the general population sample (alpha = 0-95) and reasonably high test-retest reliability over one year in the dementing sample (r = 0-75). The total IQCODE score, as well as each of the 26-items, was found to discriminate well between the general population and dementing samples. The correlation with education was quite small (r = -0-13), indicating that contamination by premorbid ability is not a problem.

No abstract

No abstract