Attitudes to Mental Illness and Its Demographic Correlates among General Population in Singapore

Abstract

BackgroundPublic attitudes to mental illness could influence how the public interact with, provide opportunities for, and help people with mental illness.AimsThis study aims to explore the underlying factors of the Attitudes to Mental Illness questionnaire among the general population in Singapore and the socio-demographic correlates of each factor.MethodsFrom March 2014 to April 2015, a nation-wide cross-sectional survey on mental health literacy with 3,006 participants was conducted in Singapore.ResultsFactor analysis revealed a 4-factor structure for the Attitudes to Mental Illness questionnaire among the Singapore general population, namely social distancing, tolerance/support for community care, social restrictiveness, and prejudice and misconception. Older age, male gender, lower education and socio-economic status were associated with more negative attitudes towards the mentally ill. Chinese showed more negative attitudes than Indians and Malays (except for prejudice and misconception).ConclusionsThere is a need for culture-specific interventions, and the associated factors identified in this study should be considered for future attitude campaigns.

What if the company’s “charity of the year” is an organisation that deals with severe to moderate mental disability?

“…Corrigan et al, 2012;DoH, 2015). "Distressful" emotions (topic two) were significantly more likely to be reported by females, an outcome matching those of several studies reported by Ewalds-Kvist et al (2012), but not those of Lauber et al (2004), Lauber et al (2004) and Yuan et al (2016). People with children were significantly more likely to make remarks that fell into the distressed category (cf.…”

“…The better-educated have been observed to be more positively inclined towards people with mental disabilities than individuals with low levels of education (see, for example, Wolff, Pathare, Craig and Leff, J., 1996;RCP, 2003;Song et al, 2005;Mirnezami et al, 2015;Yuan et al, 2016). Corrigan et al's (2012) meta-analysis of 72 studies which examined this question across 14 countries concluded that the better-educated do tend to stigmatise the mentally ill to lesser extents than the poorly educated.…”

“…Little research has been completed into the role of ethnicity in relation to public attitudes regarding mental illness, although a study by Wolff et al (1996) observed that a sample of non-Caucasian people exhibited less benevolent attitudes towards people with mental disabilities than other ethnicities. Yuan et al's (2016) survey of attitudes to mental illness in Singapore also reported some significant ethnically-based disparities. Ethnicity was not included as a covariate in the present study because the case organisation employed very few people from the UK's ethnic minorities.…”

Emotional Empathy, Social Distance and Attitude of Police Officers towards People with Mental Illness

“…Self-stigmatisation may lead to withdrawal by people with mental illness to their shell. Subsequently, people with mental illness may suffer self stigma and experience strong emotional response such as fear and rejection (Marie & Miles, 2008;Sarbin & Mancuso, 1970;Yuan, Abdin, Picco, Vaingankar, Shahwan, Jeyagurunathan, & Subramaniam, 2016) which include low levels of empowerment, and low levels of help-seeking behaviour, high rates of mortality and high rates of unemployment (Bhugra, Evans-Lacke, & Cutter, 2015). Stigmatisation makes people with mental illness delay or refuse to seek out help which result in worsen mental health experiences.…”

“…Individuals who are more empathetic tend to have more positive attitude towards members of a stigmatized group (Boag & Carnelley, 2015) and towards people with mental illness (Batson, Polycarpou, Harmon-Jones, Imhoff, Mitchener, Bednar, Klein, & Highberger, 1997;Elizur & Rosenheim, 1982). Studies have shown that the inability of the public to fully understand mental illness leads to negative attitude towards people suffering from mental illness (Nordt, Rössler, & Lauber, 2006;Yuan, Abdin, Picco, Vaingankar, Shahwan, Jeyagurunathan, & Subramaniam, 2016).…”