Rejection: A Possible Consequence of Seeking Help for Mental Disorders

The effects of seeking help for problems of disturbed behavior are examined to determine the extent to which attidudes toward an individual exhibiting symptoms of mental illness are predicated on knowledge of the particular help-source that the individual is consulting. The term "help-source" refers to the clergyman, the physician, the psychiatrist, and the mental hospital. A Graeco-Latin Square design, used with 300 respondents, provided a large amount of information from a relatively small number of observations. The findings indicate that individuals described as exhibiting identical behavior are increasingly rejected as they are described as utilizing no help, utilizing a clergyman, a physician, a psychiatrist, or a mental hospital.