| Summary: | Attitudes and beliefs about mental health difficulties have important implications for people experiencing these difficulties. Research suggests that stereotypes and stigmatising views held by the public impact on the internalisation of these beliefs by people developing mental health difficulties, delaying help-seeking (Clement et al., 2015). For over 50 years research with the general public has sought to identify correlates of negative beliefs about mental ill health (Nunnally, 1961; Schomerus et al., 2012), and this area of research is increasingly seeking to ascertain the views of mental health workers. Meta-analyses have combined data on the general public to offer summaries of this work and offer interpretations based on the whole body of evidence reporting changing opinions over time, and demographic variables linked with more positive and negative attitudes (Angermeyer & Dietrich, 2006), but to date, there have been no meta-analyses of the research regarding mental health workers attitudes and beliefs. Chapter one of this thesis is a critical review and meta-analysis of recent quantitative empirical literature exploring the impact of methodological differences on research into mental health workers’ beliefs about people with mental health problems. Recommendations are made for the use of validated measures and a standardised procedure for future research, to generate findings with clinical relevance. Aetiological beliefs have been widely researched with the general public because of a demonstrated link between biogenetic aetiology and stigmatising beliefs about people with mental health difficulties (Schomerus, Matschinger, & Angermeyer, 2014). These studies use vignettes as a method of creating a consistent reference without the use of diagnostic labels, which have been shown to influence aetiological beliefs in the general public (Angermeyer & Matschinger, 1996). Chapter two of this thesis aims to identify whether the presence of diagnostic labels correlates with higher rates of biogenetic causal beliefs than using unlabelled vignettes, with healthcare assistants and support workers in mental health services. This has implications for both the methodology of future research with mental health workers, and addresses the need to rethink the way that we communicate about mental health difficulties as health professionals.
|
|---|
