Attitudes toward Mental Illness: A Conflict between Students and Professionals

Abstract

Summury.-A study was undertaken of the attitudes of professionals and students in two "gatekeeper" professions (medicine and law). Results indicated, as predicted, that lawyers ( n = 52) and physicians ( n = 58) were significantly more oriented to the mcdical model than were the students in those same professions (ns = 37 and 21, respectively). The implications of such divergent anitudes are briefly discussed.Although there is some evidence (Morrison & Nevid, 1976;Morrison, Yablonovitz, Harris, & Nevid, 1976) that mental health professionals such as clinical psychologists and psychiatric nurses are more accepting of traditional medical model attitudes (Blaney, 1975) than are students in those same disciplines, there is none that such professional-student divergence in attitudes exists in "gatekeeper" (Gurin, Veroff, & Feld, 1960) professions, e.g.; medicine, law. Considering the growing importance of physicians in the mental health referral system, and lawyers in legal decisions impacting the mental health arena, there would be important implications for the future if findings should suggest that gatekeepers such as lawyers and physicians are more committed to the medical model than are students in the same professions. Based on the evidence in the attitude studies mentioned above, it was predicted that lawyers and physicians would also be more accepting of medical model attitudes than would students in those same disciplines. . All lawyers and physicians (not including psychiatrists) in a large tri-city area were mailed a revised version of the Client Attitude Questionnaire (Morrison, in press), a measure of a respondent's attitudes toward mental illness (Morrison & Nevid, 1976). Samples of medical and law students were drawn from available students at a small local medical college and law school. The final sample was composed of 52 lawyers, 58 physicians, 37 law students, and 21 medical students.The means and standard deviations of the four comparison groups are presented in Table 1. Comparisons by t tests indicate, as expected, that physicians report attitudes significantly more favorable to the medical model than do medical students ( t = 3.31, df = 77, p < .005) and lawyers' attitudes are significantly more accepting of that model than are law students ( t = 3.42, df 'Requests for reprints should be sent to James K Morrison, Suite 305,678 Troy-Schenectady Road, Latham, N. Y. 12110.