Children's attitudes to people with mental illness

Abstract

This paper reports a study that adopted age-appropriate terminology to investigate 6–11-year-old children's attitudes towards mental illness (N = 120). The study utilized a semi-structured interview technique and card selection tasks to assess the children's attitudes to individuals diagnosed with different mental illnesses (anorexia nervosa, depression and dementia). Their attitudes were measured in terms of social distance, social functioning, emotional response and trait attributions. Findings suggested that children's responses varied according to the specific mental illness diagnosis for social functioning, emotional response and trait attributions. In addition, the children's attitudes towards the three characters showed different developmental profiles as a function of age for social functioning and trait attributions. The implications of these findings for theories of the development of prejudice, and implications for stigma reduction programs, are discussed.