Public beliefs about and attitudes towards people with mental illness: a review of population studies

To provide a review of population-based attitude research in psychiatry during the past 15 years. METHOD: An electronic search using PubMed, Medline, and Academic Search Premier plus a hand search of the literature was carried out for studies on public beliefs about mental illness and attitudes towards the mentally ill published between 1990 and 2004.

Thirty-three national studies and 29 local and regional studies were identified, mostly from Europe. Although the majority are of descriptive nature, more recent publications include studies testing theory-based models of the stigmatization of mentally ill people, analyses of time trends and cross-cultural comparisons, and evaluations of antistigma interventions.