Attitudes to Mental Illness - 2011 survey report:part 3

Causes of mental illness and the need for special services

Introduction

This section reports on statements about the causes of mental illness and the need for
special services.
The statements reported here are:

1.  ‘There are sufficient existing services for people with mental illness’
2.  ‘One of the main causes of mental illness is a lack of self-discipline and will-power’
3.  ‘There is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from normal people’.

Analysis is based on the level of agreement with these statements, which have been included in all surveys since 1994.

Trends over time

Figure 10 shows levels of agreement with these statements since 1994.

 

Since 1994, the percentage agreeing that there are sufficient existing services for people with mental illness has increased from 11% in 1994 to 24% in 2011, although there has been no significant change since 2009.
The percentage agreeing that ‘there is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from normal people’ decreased from 29% in 1994 to 22% in 2011, although again there has been no significant change since 2009.
Agreement that one of the main causes of mental illness is a lack of self-discipline and willpower stands at 16% in 2011, not significantly different from the 1994 figure of 15%, and again with no significant change since 2009.

Differences by age and sex

Differences in agreement by age group are shown in Figure 11.

 The youngest age group (16-34s) had the most negative attitudes towards mental illness, being more likely than the 35-54 and 55+ groups to agree that there are sufficient existing services, and more likely than the 35-54s to agree that there is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from normal people.
Significant differences by gender are shown in Figure 12.

 Women again held more positive views towards people with mental illness, being less likely
than men to agree with these three statements.

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