PREVENTION AND TREATMENT IN MENTAL HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS

In: Public opinion quarterly: journal of the American Association for Public Opinion Research, Band 29, Heft 1, S. 107-119

Abstract

A quantitative experiment comparing the effects of written COMM's dealing with delusion control & stressing either prevention & self-help or post facto treatment after the fact on the opinions of 2 samples of 141 Texas Coll undergraduates was carried out. Despite the nonveridical message content, beliefs about prevention & treatment of delusions, as measured by Likerttype items & Semantic Diff'ial scales, proved, after analysis of variance, vulnerable to the persuasive COMM's, though the prevention messages had less impact than treatment messages. Initial beliefs about prevention were more vulnerable to a persuasive message stressing treatment than beliefs about treatment to a message stressing prevention. These finds conform to the current popular trend that views mental disorders re an illness model according to which a person is a passive victim who passively receives treatment. They suggest that the alternative approach of individual initiative & self-help is not only feasible but possibly desirable. AA.