In order to investigate historical shifts in attitudes toward mental health and mental health services, two independent samples of older adults separated by a 14-year time interval (1977 sample, N = 91; 1991 sample, N = 116) were administered questionnaires. Four newly created, internally consistent scales assessed multiple dimensions of their mental health attitudes (breadth of conceptions, bias, openness to help, range of problems). Analyses suggested that the younger cohorts of older adults held more positive attitudes toward mental health and mental health services than the older cohorts. These cohort differences remained when controlled for age, level of education, self-reported health, and income. These data indicate a positive cohort shift in attitudes toward mental health, a finding with numerous implications for the design and implementation of mental health services for future cohorts of older persons.

The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of age, historical change, and gender on perceptions of mental health and mental health services. Using multidimensional measures to assess such perceptions among older adults (1977, 1991, 2000), and younger adults (1991, 2000), we expected that older adults would have less positive mental health perceptions than would younger adults, that more recently born cohorts of older persons would evidence more positive perceptions, and that women, especially those more recently assessed, would also evidence more positive perceptions. To an extent, we found positive historical shifts in mental health perceptions, though data also indicated that such views may have stabilized over the last decade for older persons, and interacted with age and gender in this respect. Age differences favoring younger persons were, in part, replicated across historical time, and women held more positive mental health perceptions than did men. Over historical time, older persons' mental health perceptions are, for the most part, increasingly positive, significant in light of the increasing proportion of older persons and changes in the mental health system itself. Our data suggest that efforts to reach older men should be given high priority.

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