Attitudes and Representation in Mental Health: A Study with University Students

Abstract This study aims to know and analyze university students' social representations on the psychiatric reform and on mentally ill people, relating them to their adhesion to attention to mental health paradigms. 480 Psychology, Medicine and Nursing university students participated in this research, most of them females (74.4%) and with average age of 24 years (SD = 5.98). Data were collected through the Scale of Attitudes in Mental Health and the Technique of Free Association of Words. Results revealed ambiguous comprehension of the psychiatric reform. University students demonstrated to know practices of this new model and presented higher adhesion to psychosocial paradigms, but a representation of the mentally ill person marked by fear and exclusion and linked to biomedical paradigm was observed. Such finding seems to reflect the present situation in the mental health field, in which the biomedical paradigm was not totally overcome nor the psychosocial paradigm totally established.

摘要
本研究旨在了解并分析大学生对精神科改革（psychiatric reform）及精神疾病患者的社会表征（social representations），并探讨其与大学生对心理健康照护范式的认同程度之间的关联。本研究共纳入480名心理学、医学及护理学专业大学生作为研究对象，其中女性占比74.4%，平均年龄为24岁（标准差SD=5.98）。数据采集采用心理健康态度量表（Scale of Attitudes in Mental Health）与词语自由联想技术（Technique of Free Association of Words）完成。结果显示，大学生对精神科改革的理解存在模糊性：研究对象虽知晓该新模式的相关实践，并对社会心理范式（psychosocial paradigm）表现出较高认同，但同时也存在以恐惧与排斥为特征、且与生物医学范式（biomedical paradigm）相关联的精神疾病患者社会表征。该发现似乎反映了当前心理健康领域的现状——生物医学范式尚未被完全超越，社会心理范式也未完全确立。