The social acceptance of the ex-mental hospital patient

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The belief that the public stigmatize, stereotype, and reject the former mental hospital patient has been so pervasive among professionals that it has formed the framework of reference for major studies dealing with attitudinal social distance from the ex-mental hospital patient. Using a different approach, it is shown that the sociological characteristics of the patient rather than their normative characterization may be the significant variable for consideration.

Desire for Social Distance from People with Mental Disorders

“…Greater social distance is desired from people with mental disorders than from normal people, those with minor troubles and those with physical illnesses Social distance scales were originally interpreted against an ideal standard by which 100% acceptance was expected, but this approach was questioned by Siassi et al, who pointed out that even an idealized 'normal' individual would not necessarily receive perfect acceptance [74]. Since then a number of studies have used case vignettes to compare social distance of a person with a mental illness with some sort of control person.…”

“…Greater social distance is desired from male individuals with mental disorders than from female individuals It is not only the behaviour of the person that is associated with social distance. When male and female vignettes are presented describing the same behaviours, social distance is typically greater to the male version [32,33,35,40,65,74,83,84], but not always so [45]. This difference might be due to greater perceived dangerousness of male individuals.…”

Community Attitudes Towards Discriminatory Practice Against People with Severe Mental Illness in Hong Kong

“…Ever since the 1950s, community attitudes towards people with SMI have been of interest to researchers. Early findings demonstrated the existence of predominantly negative public attitudes towards them (Cumming & Cumming, 1957;Nunnally, 1961;Roman & Floyd, 1981;Albrecht et al, 1982;Link et al, 1987Link et al, , 1989 though even at this time a minority of studies (Bentz et al, 1969;Rabkin, 1972;Siassi et al, 1973;Phelan et al, 2000) found that little or no clear-cut prejudice existed. Later studies were even more mixed.…”

Specialized knowledge and the delivery of leisure services to the disabled

“…This is particularly important, since one necessary condition for successful normalization is acceptance by individuals in the community. For example, it has been reported that individuals who are currently being deinstitutionalized are confronted with new methods of exclusion in the community such as physical exclusion and ghettoization (Aviram and Segal 1973;Siassi, Spiro and Crocetti 1973). The role of TRS in counteracting such practices is not clear, although the recent emergence of leisure counseling might be of assistance in this respect.…”