Changing the connotations of mental illness in psychiatric patients.

Abstract

Psychiatric patients in the Human Relations Training Laboratory were evaluated before and after the 4-week program using Sargent's Insight Test, which presente situations where a central figure is confronted with social problems. Vi of the stories were modified so that the central figure was described as "mentally ill." Comparison of patients' solutions before and after the program indicated that human relations training disengages the patient from certain negative and inhibiting responses to the mental illness label, but that some spontaneity-reducing influences of the label are still apparent.