MEASURING COMMUNITY MENTAL HEALTH ATTITUDES BY MEANS OF HYPOTHETICAL CASE DESCRIPTIONS

Mental health professional and educators often make the error of failing to measure community attitudes affecting decisions for psychiatric referral in the community. This paper traces recent research utilizing hypothetical case descriptions of emotionally disturbed behavior administered to laymen in the general public, in order to measure their responses to deviant behavior. Case descriptions used in previous research can be refined by holding a number of potentially influential attributes constant among the cases, while permitting only one to vary. In the present research this variable is the aggression-withdrawal dimension of interpersonal behavior. A survey utilizing the refined case descriptions shows psychiatric referral rates of approximately 20%, with little social class difference in response. Female respondents, however, showed a greater tendency to refer the withdrawn case (rather than the aggressive case). The case descriptions and the rationale for the construction provide a format for investigating various determinants of the public's decision to refer deviant actors for psychiatric help. © 1969 Springer-Verlag.