Changing Opinion—Optimism for the Future

interprets the results of an attitude survey on mental illness. The growing importance of home care for the mentally ill is well known to the readers of this magazine. The burdens imposed on the community, and even more on the families involved in this care, are less well known and rarely studied. However, one study has been made in Nottingham.* The results are now being analysed. Families were interviewed, the use of services recorded and changes plotted. It seemed an ideal opportunity also to fill in part of the background against which the services operate and within which the families live. In this article I want to discuss a key element of this background?the attitudes of the public to mental illness and the mental health services. The conclusions are only tentative and will have to be seen alongside all the other data which the survey will eventually present. Is mental illness a serious illness? Well over two-thirds of the women interviewed regarded mental illness as serious?whereas fewer than 50 % considered T.B. as serious. The figure almost reached the five-sixths who regarded heart disease as serious. In broad terms, it is clear that mental illness is generally regarded as serious, but is it something to be feared? For many people the first answer is a qualified 'no', but there are signs of fear emerging, sometimes directly and sometimes indirectly, in the other answers given. Next hospital bed As one of the indications of attitudes to mental patients in hospital, people were asked whether they would object to having a person suffering from certain listed diseases (including mental disease) in a hospital bed next to themselves. Fewer than 1 in 30 objected to a heart disease case in the next bed, 27 % objected to a T.B. patient. The highest level of objections were recorded against having a mental patient as hospital neighbour?one in three objected. All the diseases listed were non-infectious except T.B., but in no cases were the objections so numerous as against the mental patient. This reaction may be significant bearing in mind the trend to introduce psychiatric wards into general hospitals. The signs of fear can perhaps be read into these answers. One aim of the surveys was to discover the extent of past mental illness in households where an interview took place. The scale of this illness is not relevant here?but one surprising difference emerges-" of …