Cohort differences in attitudes toward mental health services among older persons.

In order to investigate historical shifts in attitudes toward mental health and mental health services, two independent samples of older adults separated by a 14-year time interval were administered questionnaires. There were 91 in the 1977 sample (mean age 69.91 yrs) and 116 in the 1991 sample (mean age 71.94 yrs). Four newly created, internally consistent scales assessed multiple dimensions of their mental health attitudes (breadth of conceptions, bias, openness to help, range of problems). Analyses suggested that the younger cohorts of older adults held more positive attitudes toward mental health and mental health services than the older cohorts. These cohort differences remained when controlled for age, level of education, self-reported health, and income. These data indicate a positive cohort shift in attitudes toward mental health, a finding with numerous implications for the design and implementation of mental health services for future cohorts of older persons. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A general family practitioner approach for Asian-American mental health services.

A psychologist in general family practice functions as a primary care provider, who is similar to the traditional family doctor who provides treatment for clients and their families. The psychologist has an ongoing interaction with the family and serves as a resource for the family to consult when in difficulty; he or she uses knowledge of the client, as well as knowledge of the client's family, community, and social environment. This approach seems particularly suitable for Asian Americans whose culture emphasizes the role of the family. It helps to minimize the client's inhibition against seeking mental health services and provides the psychologist with certain clinical advantages. Two cases are presented to illustrate the application of this approach to Asian American clients. Situations in which family members should not be seen by the same psychologist and the issues of transference, countertransference, and confidentiality are also considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Public attitudes toward mental health professions.

"The study reported here involves the application of opinion sampling methods to public attitudes toward mental health professions." The following titles were employed: doctor, physician, nurse, psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, psychologist, clinical psychologist, research psychologist, mental hospital attendant, social worker. The Semantic Differential was used. The sample of respondents was obtained from the Opinion Panel of the Institute of Communications Research; 207 of 239 panel members returned questionnaires on time. "A very high, positive, public attitude was found for the professions as a whole." Virtually no distinction is made between the concepts doctor and physician. "No distinction is made… among the concepts Psychiatrist, Psychoanalyst, Clinical Psychologist, and Research Psychologist on the Semantic Differential… . There are large and significant differences between the concept Doctor and Physician and the cluster of concepts whose titles start with the morpheme 'Psych-.' " The mental hospital attendant is held in relatively high esteem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Locus of control and attitudes toward mental illness among mental health volunteers.

Administered Rotter's Internal-External Control (I-E) Scale and Opinions about Mental Illness (OMI) Scale to 30 volunteers at a state mental hospital and 34 undergraduate controls. It was found that the volunteer group was more internal on the I-E Scale and less likely to feel that patients should be restricted in their social functioning. Retest OMI Scale scores of 16 volunteers after 6 mo. indicated that Ss' attitudes toward patients became more benevolent over time, and they may have begun to adopt the ideology of the mental health professional. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Organizational culture and climate and mental health provider attitudes toward evidence-based practice.

Mental health provider attitudes toward adopting evidence-based practice (EBP) are associated with organizational context and provider individual differences. Organizational culture and climate are contextual factors that can affect staff acceptance of innovation. This study examined the association of organizational culture and climate with attitudes toward adopting EBP. Participants were 301 public sector mental health service providers from 49 programs providing mental health services for youths and families. Correlation analyses and multilevel hierarchical regressions, controlling for effects of provider characteristics, showed that constructive culture was associated with more positive attitudes toward adoption of EBP and poor organizational climates with perceived divergence of usual practice and EBP. Behavioral health organizations may benefit from consideration of how culture and climate affect staff attitudes toward change in practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Economics and mental health services.

J. A. Buck and R. Hirschman (see record 1980-26240-001) may have applied the tools of supply and demand analysis somewhat casually. The existence of sizable externalities, poor consumer information, and a maldistribution of services across the nation must be incorporated into the economic models that are applied to the mental health services system. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitudes toward mental health professionals.

Attitudes of 85 undergraduates toward various mental health professional roles were evaluated using a semantic differential assessment instrument. Expressed attitudes were most positive toward those roles identified with physical medicine (i.e., physician and nurse) and least positive toward those professions traditionally identified with mental illness (i.e., psychiatrist and psychoanalyst). However, the public appears to be making increasing differentiations in attitudes expressed toward the various professional groups identified with the "psyche" prefix. For example, counseling psychologist was rated consistently as one of the most positive professional role categories, whereas psychoanalyst was rated consistently as one of the most negative role designations. (11 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A cross-national study of attitudes toward mental illness.

Administered Cohen and Struening's Opinions About Mental Illness scale to a total of 1,212 college students, physicians, nurses and police in Great Britain, Czechoslovakia, and West Germany. Although there were differences among occupational groups, the differences among countries were much more substantial. Results suggest that (a) attitudes toward mental illness are part of a person's general orientation to social issues, rather than a narrow function of his concept of mental illness; and (b) in a community climate characterized by an authoritarian social-political structure, authoritarian and socially restrictive attitudes toward the mentally ill can be expected. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A behavioral study of staff attitudes toward mental illness.

65 nurses and aides completed 2 factor analyzed attitude questionnaires. Hospitalized psychiatric patients (N = 188) screened for ability to identify their staff and make valid behavioral ratings, rated their ward staff on a 55-item interpersonal behavior inventory. Relationships between perceived behavior and endorsed attitudes were examined. Restrictive attitudes were consistently related to controlling and restricting behavior. Protective Benevolence was related to such behaviors as aloofness, distance, and dishonesty. Hence, some attitudes were related to behaviors which were congruent with the endorsed attitude, some attitudes were related to seemingly incongruent behaviors, while other attitudes had no significant behavioral correlates. A new attitude area, highly related to outgoing interpersonal behavior, was identified. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Capitating mental health services

Many employers are contracting mental or behavioral health services separately from other types of health care. Capitation rates are paid for a defined set of benefits. Mental health services are capitated in two ways; both approaches are discussed.     

Ecological constraints on mental health services.

Proposes 4 principles for community mental health programing that are consistent with an ecological thesis: (1) Assessment methods are focused on the total population rather than on those persons who presently receive a mental health service. (2) Mental health services are designed to reduce a high risk for community service. (3) Professional and research services are created as local community resources. "By initiating the informal coordination of current services, the community mental health program helps to create specific new community services as needed." (4) The program plans for change; this involves mobilizing anticipatory problem-solving resources not only for clients but for professionals as well. A "conception of community mental health work based upon the ecological thesis that adaptive programs change" is presented. (39 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Acculturation, enculturation, and Asian American college students' mental health and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help.

In the present study, we tested a theoretically and empirically derived partially indirect effects acculturation and enculturation model of Asian American college students' mental health and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help. Latent variable path analysis with 296 self-identified Asian American college students supported the partially indirect effects model and demonstrated the ways in which behavioral acculturation, behavioral enculturation, values acculturation, values enculturation, and acculturation gap family conflict related to mental health and attitudes toward seeking professional psychological help directly and indirectly through acculturative stress. We also tested a generational status moderator hypothesis to determine whether differences in model-implied relationships emerged across U.S.- (n = 185) and foreign-born (n = 107) participants. Consistent with this hypothesis, statistically significant differences in structural coefficients emerged across generational status. Limitations, future directions for research, and counseling implications are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Public and private responsibility for mental health services.

Relative to public services, private sector corporate mental health care has significantly increased since the late 1960s. The many tensions encountered in assigning public and private responsibility for mental health services give rise to significant value-laden questions for psychologists. These questions go to the heart of community mental health, deinstitutionalization, mental health policy development and evaluation, and many other areas in which psychologists are playing major roles. The public–private issue should be understood historically, from the twin vantage points of developments in general medicine and in mental health. Among the many public interest and public policy matters psychologists and others concerned with mental health should address are the emergence of corporate chains; the nature, cost, and quality of private sector services; the compatibility of profit motivation and the motivation to provide care; and patient selection issues (e.g., cream-skimming). Public and private cooperation and planning are certainly in order if the public interest is to be served in addressing the nation's mental health problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Providing mental health care services to Americans.

Summarizes legislation introduced or cosponsored by the author, a US Senator from Minnesota, to respond to Americans' need for mental health services. This legislation included the Medicare Ambulatory Mental Health Services Access Amendments of 1987; S.123, a bill that would amend Part B of the Medicare program to recognize and reimburse psychologists as independent mental health providers; S.763, the Services for Homeless Mentally Ill Individuals Act of 1987; S.809, the Urgent Relief for the Homeless Act; and S.1663, the Child Abuse Prevention Act of 1987. The author encourages mental health professionals to promote public policies that expand Americans' access to public health services through research, effective communication of this research, and preventive mental health efforts (such as programs aimed at preventing teen suicide). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

DRGs and the administration of mental health services.

Contends that if diagnosis-related groups (DRGs) were applied to cover mental health services, there is considerable doubt that they would adequately reimburse for costs. They also may undermine the quality of services and encourage managing for profitability rather than results. It is recommended that other funding patterns be sought and that the organization of mental health services and the treatment technology in use be improved. (44 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Providers' views of HMO mental health services.

112 health maintenance organization (HMO) mental health providers from 19 HMOs were asked to describe the services provided by their mental health department, give demographic data about providers themselves, and rate the services provided as well as their satisfaction with providers' benefits and compensation. More than half of the Ss reported having a private practice in addition to their position at an HMO. The average full-time person doing direct clinical practice reported seeing about 23 clients per week. Other results suggest differences in satisfaction level varying with salary and patient load. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral change and public attitudes toward public health

One hundred patients suffering from recurrent acute tonsillitis were studied. One hundred tonsils were cultured. Surface bacteria were compared to deep bacteria. In 48 per cent of the cases a different pathogen was cultured from the interior of the tonsil as compared to the surface culture. This fact may explain recurrence of tonsillitis and makes the reliability of the conventional tonsillar culture questionable. Surgical extirpation of the tonsils seems to be the only treatment since deep bacteria remain unidentified and resist the antibiotic therapy that may affect only the surface microflora.     

Clinical psychologist in the vanguard: Current attitudes toward mental illness.

To determine the current degree of acceptance of an antimedical approach to mental illness, a survey was conducted of attitudes toward mental illness among various mental health professionals (20 psychiatrists, 23 psychiatric nurses, 16 psychologists, and 25 social workers) and mental patients (41 outpatients with a history of psychiatric hospitalization and 20 outpatients with no similar history) in a community mental health center. Responding to 6 statements reflecting attitudes toward the traditional medical model, clinical psychologists showed greater acceptance of the antimedical paradigm than did psychiatrists, psychiatric social workers, psychiatric nurses, and psychiatric outpatients. Several explanations are offered as to why clinical psychologists appear to be in the vanguard of those adopting a critical, antimedical stance within the clinical arena. (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)