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A Comparison of Responses to the Mentally Ill in Two Communities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 January 2018

Peter Hall ,
Ian F. Brockington ,
Jenny Levings  and
Christopher Murphy
Peter Hall*
Affiliation:
The Woodbourne Clinic, Birmingham, lately Senior Consultant Psychiatrist Worcester Royal Infirmary
Ian F. Brockington
Affiliation:
University of Birmingham
Jenny Levings
Affiliation:
Department of Health Care of the Elderly, University of Birmingham, lately Research Fellow, Worcester, World Health Organization Field Research Centre
Christopher Murphy
Affiliation:
West Midlands Health Authority
*
∗(paper II): The Woodbourne Clinic, 21 Woodbourne Road, Edgbaston, Birmingham B17 8BY
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Abstract

Vignettes representing mentally ill people were presented to about 2000 randomly selected residents in Bromsgrove, served by a mental hospital, and Malvern, served by a community-based psychiatric service. They were asked about the likely cause of the condition, what action they would take, and what agencies were most likely to help. In Malvern, residents seemed more enterprising in involving various agencies and more tolerant. It is possible to derive simple ‘action scores' as an indicator of such tolerance. Although there were significant demographic differences between subgroups, overall identification of vignette subjects as mentally ill was surprisingly low, and so was knowledge both of community psychiatric nurses as an agency, and of the location of dispersed treatment facilities in both areas.

Type
Research Article
Information
The British Journal of Psychiatry , Volume 162 , Issue 1 , January 1993 , pp. 99 - 108
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 

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