An Attempt to Change the Negative, Stigmatizing Image of Mental Patients through Brief Reeducation

To test the hypothesis that presenting data generally contradictory to a person's negative image of the will reduce that person's negative view of the patient, 26 female and 12 male college students, undergraduate juniors and seniors with 15.3 yr. of formal education and a mean age of 23.3 yr., were given the semantic differential (3) as measure of a person's image (constructs) of patients. This 30-item version (1) of the 7-point scale allows respondents to rate a mental patient on a series of bipolar dimensions, e.g., safe-dangerous. Ratings on negative dimensions are scored as 1, 2, and 3; ratings on positive dimensions as 5, 6, and 7; and neutral ratings as 4. The maximum (positive) score is 210, the minimum (negative) 30. During one 2-hr. class of medical sociology students were presented by the first author (unknown to the students) with a large amount of data (2) contradicting the traditional negative image of the patient. Participants completed the construct measure before and after the presentation, as well as 5 wk. later in the follow-up. Analyses by t tests indicated a significant (df = 37, p < .05) reduction at postpresentation of students' negative constructs of patients on eight dimensions of the measure: dangerous-safe (t = 7.32), strange-familiar (t = 3.62), remote-intimate (6 = 4.01 ), mysterious-understandable (t = 3.36), sick-healthy (t = 3.14), worthlessvaluable (t = 2.84), unpredictable-predictable (t = 2.63), and dirty-clean ($ = 2.48). On one dimension (passive-active) students' constructs became more negative after the seminar (t = 2.19). On the remaining 21 dimensions post-seminar change did not attain significance. Pretest-follow-up comparisons showed participants' constructs continued to remain significantly less negative than at pretest. On follow-up respondents no longer reported significantly more negative constructs on the passive-active dimension. Results suggest that the demythologizing process might help reduce a college student's negative constructs of patients, at least on certain dimensions. This finding corroborates well with similar research with patients (I), but further research must determine whether the approach might reduce the general public's negative image (4) of the patient. REFERENCES