What is mental illness? Social representations of mental illness among British and French mental health professionals

: Mental health professionals are important actors in implementing public mental health policies and in shaping lay representations of mental illness. The research reported in this paper focuses on the social representations of mental illness held by these professionals in Britain and France. In interviews conducted with sixty mental health workers from a range of professional backgrounds the definition of mental illness emerged as a key concern. Evidence for two social representations of mental illness is found a medical social representation based on the language and assumptions of psychiatry, and a functional social representation which conceptualises mental illness as an inability to cope and function. Within these representations themes of otherness coexist with themes of sameness. The mentally ill are Other because of their different and un-understandable experiences. Simultaneously mental illness is also described as similar to other experiences. Often professionals use these themes to distinguish between psychoses (primarily otherness) and neuroses (primarily sameness). No single understanding of mental illness is dominant. Professional social representations of mental illness appear to be complex and characterised by uncertainty and ambivalence. Any research investigating social representations of mental illness must take as its starting point the findings obtained by Jodelet (1991). Her in-depth study of a "family colony" in rural France where mentally ill lodgers have lived with families in the community for over a hundred years is one of the most detailed studies conducted within the field of social representations to date. Jodelet describes a community which has * The research reported in this paper was supported by a postgraduate award from the Economic and Social Research Council, and by an exchange scholarship funded jointly by University of London and the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.