Prejudice towards People with Mental Illness: Measurement, Structure, and Antecedents in Mental Health Professionals and the General Population

Abstract

This study sought to create and validate a shortened version of the promising Prejudice towards People with Mental Illness (PPMI) scale and use it to measure and compare prejudiced attitudes in mental health professionals and in the general population. An additional goal was to examine the antecedents to prejudice towards people with mental illness. An online survey collected information regarding: demographics; mental health professional-related variables; prejudiced attitudes towards people with mental illness generally and towards people with schizophrenia and depression; and a number of proposed antecedents to prejudice. The proposed antecedents were constructs known to correlate with other forms of prejudice, such as racism and religious intolerance. These were: social dominance orientation; right wing authoritarianism; ethnocentrism; feelings towards other marginalised groups; personality traits of agreeableness and openness to experience; prior contact with people with mental illness; and political ideology. Four hundred and twenty-seven participants from the general population and 299 mental health professionals completed the survey. The shortened scales demonstrated construct validity through factor analysis and convergent validity through correlations with theoretically related variables in both groups. Mental health professionals demonstrated less prejudice overall than the general population. Attitudes in both groups were most negative towards people with schizophrenia and least negative towards people with depression. All proposed antecedents were correlated with prejudiced attitudes. These antecedents were also better predictors of prejudice than were any demographic or profession-related variables examined. Show more