Original scientific paper
Students’ attitudes on persons suffering from psychological malfunctions: addition to stereotype research
Milana Ljubičić
; Faculty of Philosophy, Belgrade University, Belgrade, Serbia
Slađana Dragišić Labaš
; Faculty of Philosophy, University of Belgrade, Serbia, Clinic for Psychiatric Diseases »Dr Laza Lazarevic«, Belgrade, Serbia
Petar Nastasić
; Faculty of Political Science Belgrade University, Belgrade, Serbia
Abstract
Introduction: This paper deals with student’s attitudes towards
the persons suffering from mental disorders and addicts to PAS – alcohol and drugs. It was our desire to introduce changes to the Mental Disorders Sociology Course based on the given answers.
The main aim of the research was to study so-called social representation that future professionals have on those categories of the mentally ill. We also tried to establish the link between attitude direction and some socio-demographic characteristics of the researched families.
We used questionnaires about socio-demographic characteristics of the responders, the typical perception of the mentally ill, drug addicts and alcoholics, and, using the Lickert type scale, the attitudes towards the mentally ill.
The study included 63 responders. The mentally ill are seen as: aggressive, unpredictable and secluded. 60% of responders agreed that the mentally ill need to be intellectually active, 1/3 were undecided, while less than 10% believe that such activity is unnecessary. About 70% stated that they would accept a person who is seeking treatment for mental disorder as a co-worker, less than ¼, were undecided, and about 8% stated that they would not be able to work with a mentally ill person.
It appears that tolerance for the mentally ill has increased, while on the other hand the stereotype of a drug addict and a alcoholic is still connected with appearance, aggressiveness and psychological features more than with social and moral failing as research by Popovic et al. has shown in the 80’s.
Keywords
attitude; mentally ill; PAS addicts
Hrčak ID:
136118
URI
Publication date:
15.12.2013.
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