Demon or disorder: A survey of attitudes toward mental illness in the Christian church

The present study assessed the attitudes and beliefs that mentally ill Christians encountered when they seek counsel from the church. Participants (n?=?293) completed an anonymous online survey in relation to their interactions with the church. Analysis of the results found that while a majority of the mentally ill participants were accepted by the church, approximately 30% reported a negative interaction. Negative interactions included abandonment by the church, equating mental illness with the work of demons, and suggesting that the mental disorder was the result of personal sin. Analysis of the data by gender found that women were significantly more likely than men to have their mental illness dismissed by the church and/or be told not to take psychiatric medication. Given that a religious support system can play a vital role in recovery from serious mental disorders, these results suggest that continued education is needed to bring the Christian and mental health communities together.     

Gender and opinions about mental illness as predictors of attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help

Help-seeking attitudes have been an important part of research into the kinds of college students who do and do not seek psychotherapy. The current study investigated the relationship between students' opinions about mental illness and their attitudes toward seeking professional help. By also using gender as a predictor of help-seeking attitudes, the researchers examined the effects of opinions about mental illness on help-seeking attitudes above and beyond well-known gender effects. This is important because opinions about mental illness are the kind of attitudinal variables that should be more modifiable than gender identity. The results indicate that females had more positive attitudes toward seeking help than males, and that people's opinions about mental illness, especially more benevolent, less authoritarian, less socially restrictive and higher mental hygiene ideology perspectives, accounted for a significant percentage of positive help-seeking attitudes beyond the percentage accounted for by gender.     

Impact of learning orientation on African American children's attitudes toward high-achieving peers

This study examined Ogbu's widely accepted thesis that African American students reject high academic achievement because they perceive its limited utility in a world where their upward mobility is constrained by racial discrimination. Boykin's psychosocial integrity model contends that Black students value high achievement but that discrepancies between their formative cultural experiences and those imposed in school lead them to reject the modes of achievement available in classrooms. Ninety Black children completed a measure of attitudes toward students who achieve via mainstream or African American cultural values. Participants rejected the mainstream achievers and embraced the African American cultural achievers. Moreover, they expected their teachers to embrace the mainstream achievers and reject those who achieved through high-verve behavior. Results suggest that Boykin's thesis is a needed refinement to Ogbu's ideas. They indicate that Black children may reject not high achievement but some of the mainstream cultural values and behaviors on which success in mainstream classrooms is made contingent.     

Female and male attitudes toward life: Implications for theories of mental health

In an attempt to better understand the ways in which females and males perceive their sociopsychological condition, the relationship of 12 independent variables to satisfaction with life is investigated using multivariate analysis. The analysis is premised on the assumption that a relationship may exist between differential feelings of life satisfaction of females and males and the known variations in mental health rates between the sexes. Data come from a national survey of 2,164 adults. The dependent variable is derived by factor analyzing semantic differential scales in which respondents select adjectives best describing their lives. Although a sharp difference by sex exists regarding satisfaction with life (36.1% of the males compared to only 13.5% females report high satisfaction), a high degree of congruence is found between the sexes in the variables contributing to life satisfaction: work satisfaction, personal competence, age, and marital adjustment index.