Mental Illness Stigma in City of Tehran, 2009

The stigma associated with mental illness adds to the public health burden of mental illness itself. In general terms stigma is the status loss and discrimination triggered by negative stereotypes. To our knowledge, this is not any large scale study of knowledge of and attitudes towards mental illness in Iran. Therefore, the aim of this study was to determine the knowledge and attitude of a community sample towards mental illness in city of Tehran. This cross-sectional study was conducted in city of Tehran between April and December 2009. By a multistage random sampling of household respondents, 800 subjects were recruited in the study. A modified version of the questionnaire developed for the "World Psychiatric Association Program to Reduce Stigma and Discrimination" was used. The method of collecting data was interview by trained interviewers. We used SPSS V.13 software for describing and analyzing data. Chi-square was used for subgroup analyses. The mean age of sample was 37.5 years (14.7 yrs) with 53.3% being males. Most of them (70%) mentioned that mental illness is treatable out of hospital and 74% of them believed patients with mental illness could have ordinary jobs. About 68% had a positive attitude towards friendly relationship with mental illness patients. About 52.5% of the subjects believed that people with mental illness are dangerous because of their violent behaviors. Only 17% of subjects were afraid of having conversation with a mentally ill person. Generally, socio-demographic variables were not associated with knowledge and attitudes of peoples towards mental illness strongly. There is not extensive stigmatization of mental illness in our sample. Compared to other similar studies, the views and attitudes of our sample towards mental illness were partially good and acceptable.