Perception on Mental Illness:Gauging Perceptions of 15-65 Year Olds in Pan-india

The present study was aimed at assessing the perception of common people on mental illnesses. For the purpose of the study a mixed method design was used. A questionnaire was developed consisting of objective as well as subjective questions. It was built on three factors related to the attitude towards mental illness, namely, authoritarianism, benevolence, and social restrictiveness, which were based on two standardized scales namely CAMI (Cohen, 2010) and OMI (Cohen & Struening, 1962). The data was collected from 422 participants from all over India. Cronbach's alphas were calculated to assess the internal consistency of the dimensions. Further, independent samples t-test was conducted to assess the significance of gender differences across the dimensions and content analysis was conducted to analyse the subjective questions. The results indicated that males had significantly higher authoritarian attitudes towards the mentally ill than females. However, for the other two dimensions no gender differences were discovered. The content analysis of qualitative data revealed that the picture is not entirely bleak as there exists some familiarity with and awareness about mental health and the contingent issues, but there is still immense scope in increasing the sensitisation towards mental health awareness. Hence, this domain demands more research.