Attitudes toward the mentally ill and community care among professionals and their students.

Abstract

On the premise that effective community care of the mentally ill is enhanced if relevant professionals share similar attitudes regarding the mentally ill and community as opposed to institutional care, such attitudes were examined among 117 faculty and graduate students in a major southeastern land-grant university in clinical psychology, law, and social work. The relationship between age and these attitudes and the possibility of a generation gap between faculty and students regarding these attitudes were also examined. In terms of comparisons among disciplines, faculty and students in social work were more positive in their attitudes than their counterparts in clinical psychology and law. The greatest difference within disciplines usually was between firstyear students and faculty. In addition, relatively more differences were found to exist between faculties and students in both clinical psychology and law than in social work. Finally, analysis of the data indicated that there were no statistically significant relationships between age and any of the attitude scores.