Attitudes Toward Former Patients of Tuberculosis, Mental Disease, or Leprosy, and Their Socio-Psychological Determinants.

Abstract

The present study aimed at investigating attitudes toward people who had formerly been patients of Tuberculosis (Tb), Mental Disease (MD) or Leprosy (Lep). Three scales were constructed for measuring attitudes toward cured patients of each disease. They consisted of 13 items, which were the same in wording except the name of the disease. In these scales, it was assumed that former patients were now completely recovered and not different from Qrdinary people intheir appearance. Three other scales, measuring knowledge about each disease, were also constructed. Fourty-four male and ninety-six female college students served as Ss. They answered thequestionnaire, including the 3 attitude scales and the 3 knowledge scales, and 2 other for measuring social attitude in general: the F-scale constructed by Adorno et al. and the Sly constructed by Gordon. The results were as follows: 1) Attitudes toward the cured patients were different between the 3 diseases. Ss showed considerably favorable attitudes toward the former patients of Tb, but were unfavorable toward MD and Lep. 2) Ss' attitudes toward the cured patients of the 3 diseases were highly correlated to each other. There was a common element in regard to the f avorableness-unf avorableness of attitudes among them. 3) Generally speaking, many of the Ss responded correctly to items of the knowledge scales. Especially, the proportion of correct respondents was large among items concerning Tb. 4) There were very low correlations between attitudes and knowledge of the corresponding disease. 5) The more authoritarian were their attitudes on the F-scale, the more unfavorable were the attitudes toward people who had recovered from the illness.