STIGMATIZATION OF PEOPLE WITH MENTAL ILNESS

ANALYSIS OF STUDENT ATTITUDES

Abstract

The paper examines the attitudes of students from the Faculty of Law, University of Rijeka, which were obtained by anonymous questionnaire. Level of stigmatization is determined for different deviant groups of society (former drug addicts, former alcoholics, former prisoners, people with mental disorders) through a total of 77 questions. The paper analyses the results obtained through two surveys. The first survey that represents the a priori of students’ attitudes toward the stigmatized groups of society, and the second one was conducted after a sort of social experiment, i.e. the acquisition of elementary knowledge about the traditionally stigmatized groups of society within the course of Forensic Psychopathology. The surveys were carried out to determine the changes in attitudes of respondents towards the stigmatized groups of society. Relevant sample consists of 114 students, which number consists only of students who participated in first survey as well as in second, during the course. The survey has been continuously conducted from academic year 2007/2008 to 2015/2016. Questions are focused on different life circumstances or situations in which the respondents usually encounter stigmatized categories of society, from biased
interactive situations through professional relationships to emotional relationships. The highest degree of stigmatization was shown towards persons with mental disorders, ex inmates and drug addicts. A clear liberalization of attitudes towards the mentioned categories was noticed when the responses obtained in the second survey were analysed. For this very reason, there is a need to break the prejudice fully, in order to liberalize and sensitize relations to the traditionally stigmatized categories of society, primarily to raise the level of tolerance needed in the acceptance of “different ones‟ in society.