Undergraduate Students’ Perceptions of Schizophrenia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to evaluate knowledge of students enrolled in an Introductory Psychology class about schizophrenia. Students filled out a questionnaire containing twelve questions on a variety of issues connected to this disorder. The questions were tested in a pilot study using students in a fourth year Psychology course focused on Schizophrenia. Participants were asked to specify their age, less than 20 (62%) and 20+ (37%). The mean number of questions answered correctly was low, only 6.5 out of 12. The students’ gender made a difference to the number of correct answers they gave, with males (\(\overline \times \)= 6.89) doing better than females (\(\overline \times \)= 6.13), while year of study did not. Of four different subcategories of questions (demographic, causal, social and criminal), students did the worst on demographic and the best on social. Also, the relationship between accuracy and certainty on each question was explored and we found that some students had strongly held wrong beliefs on certain questions, such as the multiple personalities, prodromal symptoms, number of people with the illness, and hallucinations and delusions ones. This questionnaire helps identify areas of ignorance that students had about schizophrenia and suggests where more education needs to be directed to dispel myths about it which stigmatize those with this disorder.