Social Tolerance of the Mentally Ill in the Mexican American Community

Abstract

This work is a comparative study of social tolerance toward mental illness. The central concern is with the orientation of the Chicano toward these phenomena. The aim is to determine whether or not attitudes that Mexican Americans hold toward mental illness differ from those of other Americans. Survey research methods are used to conduct a comparative study of two ethnically distinct groups - Anglo and Mexican American. Attitudes toward mental illness are measured by a social distance scale. High to low tolerance toward the mentally ill is measured. The questions range from close personal to more distant association, such as whether or not one would mind having his or her children marry someone considered to be mentally ill, to whether or not one would mind working with such a person. We have found that sex, age and education are the primary variables associated with attitudes towards mental illness. Better educated Chicanos are clearly more tolerant of the mentally disabled than the little schooled. The gender of the respondents also appears significant in determining the extent of their tolerance. Older Chicanas with less education are the least tolerant of the mentally ill, while younger women are more tolerant than the older. And the Chicano tends to be tolerant whatever his educational level. There is little difference in tolerance between Chicanos and Anglos.

Overall Life Satisfaction and Help‐Seeking Attitudes of Turkish College Students in the United States: Implications for College Counselors

“…Certain demographic variables have been linked to increased levels of help-seeking behaviors among international students, although not all studies have yielded consistent results. Demographic variables that have been studied include age (Parra, 1985), education (Dadfar, 1981;Al-Qasem, 1987), sex (Fischer & Farina, 1995;Tata & Leong, 1994), socioeconomic status (SES; Ying & Miller, 1992), academic major (Fischer & Farina, 1995), level of religiosity (Haque-Khan, 1997), previous experience in counseling (Dadfar & Friedlander, 1982), and level of acculturation (Haque-Khan, 1997; Tata & Leong, 1994). Thus, these demographic variables were included as independent variables in the present study.…”

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

“…Previous studies have shown that these attitudes could vary from acceptance [3], tolerance [4], to stigma [5], and even fear [6]. Researchers have proposed two different ways by which public attitudes might affect individuals with mental illness.…”

“…Although there are different tools that can measure stigma [12, 13], public attitude is a much broader issue than these negative attitudes. Other attitudes like tolerance [4] and acceptance [3] are also part of it. Thus there is a need for multidimensional attitudes scales for assessing public attitudes to mental illness.…”

“…Lauber et al [18] found that demographic factors such as age, gender and the cultural background contributed to social distances, with the explained variance as 44.8%. Another study among Mexican Americans found that demographics such as age, gender and education were the primary variables associated with attitudes towards mental illness [4]. Moreover, the direction of such relationships may vary across different cultures—a Swiss sample suggested that women tended to have more negative attitudes towards people who are mentally ill [19].…”

Perceptions of Mental Illness in Mexico: a Descriptive Study in the City of Chihuahua

“…With Chicanos in the United States Karno and Edgerton (1969) is the most cited article to date. Parra and So (1983) and Parra (1985) are the most recent studies dealing with the perceptions and attitudes of the Mexican American towards mental illness.…”