Proximity and the Formation of Public Attitudes towards Mental Illness

Abstract

This paper investigates the effect of proximity on attitudes towards mental illness. One outcome of the policies referred to as deinstitutionalization is an overall reduction in the social and geographical distance between members of the public and the mentally ill. For deinstitutionalization to be successful, it is important that residents in impacted communities become more accepting, both in a passive and in an active sense. A survey was made of residents in two neighborhoods of the city of Norman, Oklahoma, one of which was adjacent to a large mental health facility. In a causal model framework, the relationship between proximity and public attitudes is investigated; and the results suggest an important and significant relationship. The implications of the study for public education campaigns about mental illness, and for facility location strategies, are discussed.

The geography of mental health: an established field?

“…Central to this bleak vision has been a recognition that small-scale mental health facilities have tended to cluster in specific parts of cities, usually rundown inner cities with properties suitable for conversion and, more significantly, the absence of organized community opposition, creating what some have termed the 'asylum without walls' [75,76], 'psychiatric ghettos' or 'service-dependent ghettos' [77][78][79][80][81] saturated with mental health clients. The resulting geographies of mental health facilities must hence be envisaged in terms of overlapping surfaces: one comprising the 'geometry' of where facilities end up sited relative to one another, including the so-called 'externality fields' of declining impacts with increasing distances away from each facility [84,85]; one comprising the lumpy contours of demand for such facilities from people with mental problems [86]; and another comprising the uneven patterns of 'accepting' and 'rejecting' neighbourhoods, particularly within the city, as bound up with the intersecting axes of class, ethnicity, family status and the like [87]. If true, then location decisions may be less about what is best for clients and more a reflection of imbalances in hierarchies of power and influence.…”

Social rejection of the mentally ill: A replication study of public attitude

“…The shift in public mental health services, moving the emphasis from institutional to community based care, has heightened the importance of public attitudes, particularly as these relate to the delivery of services in neighborhood settings (Smith and Hanham 1981). Public response to the development of treatment facilities in neighborhoods has been seen to be an important factor in the creation of community mental health services, as a negative reaction can serve to block local resource development.…”

Everyday Spaces of Mental Distress: The Spatial Habituation of Home

“…Questions of equality in terms of gender, race and class were prominent, with a broad emancipatory drive to highlight inequalities in the provision of care, particularly with regard to the shift from mass hospitalisation to community service provision (Wolch & Philo, 2000). Analysis of the social effects of the locating of new community services occurred, incorporating the views of the general public faced with the prospect of having 'mad' neighbours (Dear & Taylor, 1982;Smith & Hanham, 1981a, 1981b. A concern with analysing the perspectives of the mentally distressed themselves arose, with those actually using services rather than the services themselves becoming a research priority.…”