DOES A COMMUNITY-BASED PSYCHIATRIC-CARE INFLUENCE THE PUBLIC IMAGE OF MENTALLY-ILL

By a telephone opinion poll in a well established area of community-based psychiatric care of Mannheim we investigated the viewpoints on mentally ill to four issues - emotional reactions? social distance, discrimination, characteristics. There were no significant differences between our two groups i.e., group 1 (n = 40) with everyday contacts and group 2 (n = 42) with casual contacts to mentally ill. Group 1 with more frequent contacts to mentally ill was found to be more competent and less anxious in tendency, prepared to integrate them into society, convinced from a less advantageous image of mentally ill in the society and regarded them as being more peaceful and less uncanny than group 2. In total, a community-based psychiatric care seems to create a more realistic and less demoniac image of mentally ill in public.