Changing Ideas on Mental Illness and Its Treatment

SOCIAL scientists sometimes get a mite discouraged over the slowness of the public to accept their findings. The folklore is tough and resistant, entrenched in common sense and bulwarked by dogmas concerning the nature of human nature. To substitute the viewpoints derived from scientific research seems a slow process. However slow the process may be, it does eventually become apparent that the folklore is yielding in many areas. This paper presents some evidence that it is being overcome in the particular area having to do with mental illness and personal maladjustment. Folk beliefs concerning causes of mental disorder, folk attitudes toward the victims of such disorder, and folk prescriptions for treatment are all giving way to concepts and attitudes based on modern science. The change in a generation is really surprising, and should hearten the sociologists, the social workers, and the psychiatrists. This at least is the conclusion to be drawn from the research study about to be described. In the summer of 1950 Collier's Magazine and the City of Louisville jointly agreed to finance a study of the attitudes of Louisville citizens on the general subject of mental health.' The study was one of a series