Scottish Views of Mental Illness

Abstract

A brief historical review of Scottish attitudes to the mentally ill is followed by a description of the 1966 Edinburgh survey of opinion on mental illness. This was carried out by structured interview on a random sample of the Edinburgh population. Part of the instrument, which had been carefully pretested and developed for this purpose, was submitted to 12 consultants in the professorial teaching units of Scottish University Medical Schools. The psychiatrists' opinions were compared with those of the general public and several differences were discovered. The public were more fearful and less optimistic than the specialists and their ideas of the causation of mental illness were connected with environmental rather than personality factors. Since the younger, better educated members of the community held views closest to those of the psychiatrists it is suggested that the opinion gap would probably lessen still further, encouraging more patients to seek specialist attention and putting extra pressure upon the available treatment facilities.