Edward H. Fischer

Some consequences of changing people's views regarding the nature of mental illness.

The major focus of the three studies reported was the consequences of changing public conceptions of mental illness for the sufferer and his family. In two identically performed studies with a total of 405 subjects, two messages (one describing mental illness as a disease and the other as a.- product of social learning) were effective in changing beliefs. More important, the subjects receiving the disease message thought that a victim of mental illness could do less to help himself than did the subjects receiving the social learning message. In a third study, the subjects received similar messages and were given a therapy session. They were then asked to keep a journal for a week and to make an entry in the journal every time a problem similar to one discussed in therapy arose. It was expected that the disease message subjects would feel less able to master the problems and, consequently, would think about them less frequently. The findings confirmed the expectation.