Public relations in mental health programs

THE CURRENT TREND toward basing mental health facilities close to where people live and work, and the increased emphasis on viewing mental illness in terms of social malfunction, have heightened professional awareness of the importance of community attitudes about mental illness, the mentally ill peirson, and those who treat him. Favorable attitudes alone may not produce desired behavior nor always indicate that the facts are prolperly understood. They do provide a receptive climate for t,he neweir treatment techniques and a base on which to build better understanding and concrete support of modern mental health programs. Publicly declared or civic attitudes toward mental illness have changed considerably in the past 50 years; especially in the past 15. The average person nowadays is more apt to conceptualize psychosis in terms of an illness or at least to say that he does. He is also more apt to say that mental illness may be treated with some success, even if he does not really believe it. Few people today reject the mentally ill outright, and many express favorable attitudes toward psychiatiry and the other mental health professions although a large percent-age of the population still do not seek needed psychiatric help for themselves or their relatives except a,s a "last ditch" meiasure. Despite these short-comings, the culture is now in a state of transition with regard to mental illness. Changes in attitudes that people express publicly generally precede changes in felt attitudes and attitudes on which their actions are predicated. A key goal of present-day mental health program planning and adnministration must be to capitalize on the gains made thus far and to develop specific public relations objectives around which to mobilize, direct, and activate these germinal favorable attitudes.