Influence of open and closed mental hospitals on attitudes in the United States and Britain.

Abstract

This research was primarily designed to measure effects of open hospitals on attitudes toward mental illness in the vicinity. An assessment of prevailing beliefs was a secondary objective. Communities adjacent to open and closed hospitals and communities having no NP hospital were sampled in Scotland and three regions of the United States. 1,200 selected people were individually interviewed with a questionnaire. Results confirmed the hypothesis that communities near unlocked hospitals were significantly more accepting of mental patients. This research revealed no evidence that cultural attitudes make open hospitals more feasible in Britain than in the United States.

Attitudes of hospital personnel and the community regarding mental illness.

“…There was a remarkable difference between hospital and community people regarding whether more men or women required hospitahzation in an NP hospital. The hospital personnel (in this all male veteran's hospital) said more men, whereas the community (like eleven other communities sampled in a previous study (Wright & Shrader, 1965) said more women. The x~ w -*s 52 48 which was significant well beyond the .001 level The most reasonable explanation for the belief concerning the incidence of mental illness in men and women held by the VA hospital peisonnel at Gulfport lies in the fact that this hospital accepts only male patients It should be noted, however, that despite the fact that this attitude is atypical compared to all other groups studied, it is more realistic than the others in relation to the true incidence of hospitahzations for mental illness in men and women (Nagan, 1961).…”

“…It is interesting to note that these same five were given top ranking in a study of 1,200 people representing the public at large in 12 communities (Wright & Shrader, 1965). Thus there does not seem to be a cultural lag in this respect between hospital workers and the general public, except possibly on the lelative importance of parents and alcohol as etiological variables in the occurrence of mental illness!…”

“…One hundred residents of Gulfport, Mississippi, were selected by a modified domal sampling technique and interviewed with the Wright Mental Illness Questionnaire, Form I (Wright & Shrader, 1965) This questionnaire was judged to be more heavily loaded on the factors isolated as Mental Hygiene Ideology and Social Restricts, eness in the study of attitudes of hospital personnel by Cohen and Struening (1962). One hundred and seventy -nine employees of the Gulfport VA Hospital responded to the same questionnaire.…”

Possible community consequences of attitudes toward and models of deviant behavior

“…Perhaps programs of contact between psychiatric hospital and community can counteract these potentially harmful attitudes. This suggestion is supported by the findings of Wright and Shrader (1965), who found that residents of communities with open mental hospitals were more accepting of patients than were residents of communities with closed mental hospitals. In a related study Wright and Klein (1966) found higher acceptance of patients by hospital personnel than by community members.…”