Public attitudes toward psychiatric treatment. An international comparison.

Aim: In order to examine whether there is a relationship between the state of mental health care and the acceptance of psychiatry, public attitudes toward psychiatric treatment in three countries where the reform of mental health care has progressed to a different degree will be compared.

Methods: Population surveys on public beliefs about mental illness and attitudes toward psychiatric treatment were conducted in Bratislava, Slovak Republic, and Novosibirsk, Russia. The data were compared with those from a population survey that had recently been carried out in Germany.

The relationship between public causal beliefs and social distance toward mentally ill people.

Objective: The aim of this study is to investigate the nature of the relationship between public causal beliefs and social distance toward people with mental disorders, particularly schizophrenia and depression.

Method: In total, three representative surveys were carried out in Germany, Russia and Mongolia using personal, fully structured interviews.

Results: Despite the subjects' different cultural backgrounds, their responses show similar trends with regard to attributing depression and schizophrenia to psychosocial causes: 'acute stress' (life event) was most frequently endorsed as the cause for these two disorders.

[Opinions on psychiatric diseases of the citizens of Novosibirsk: results of a representative study].

Background: Citizens of Novosibirsk were questioned regarding their ideas about schizophrenia and depressive disorders, with one of the main concerns being a comparison with the ideas and attitudes of the German population.

Method: In 2002, a representative survey (N = 745) was conducted among the adult population of Novosibirsk, using a fully structured interview that has been used in previous surveys in Germany.

Results: Symptoms of schizophrenia were more frequently identified as an indication of mental disorder than were depressive symptoms.