Attitudes toward mental illness influenced by several factors
6/27/2008 3:16:14 PM
A recent study conducted amongst faculty at College of the North Atlantic (CNA) has turned up some interesting findings.
Mary Keefe, Coordinator of Disability Services at the college’s Corner Brook and St. Anthony campuses, carried out the survey and presented the results at the Canadian Association of College and University Student Services (CACUSS) conference which took place in St. John’s from June 22-25.
The session drew a large number of delegates who work in student services, especially those working in the area of disability services.
“Even with good supports in place for students with disabilities, an environment can be disabling if negative attitudes are encountered,” said Keefe. “We have found there is a hierarchy of disabilities attitudes – faculty are generally more accommodating for people with a visible disability, but there is less acceptance toward students with non-visible disabilities, especially psychiatric illnesses. This is important because up to 21% of students with disabilities self-identify as having a psychiatric illness. And we know if that many are self-identifying, then there are many more in our system who are not.”
Keefe says there is an attitude among students that if they identify themselves as having a psychiatric illness, such as depression, bi-polar disorder, schizophrenia, etc., then there is a stigma that goes with that, so they choose simply to not disclose their disability.
“Hence, we have this group of students with special needs and those needs are not being met,” she says.
Keefe’s study was sent to 650 faculty members at the college’s 17 campuses across Newfoundland and Labrador. She received 165 replies for a 25% response rate. While she would have liked to have had at least a 30% rate, she says the number was enough to produce reliable data.
One of the most interesting statistics revealed through her research was that attitudes toward students with non-visible disabilities were less positive among higher educated faculty.
“Before the survey was completed, I assumed that attitudes towards psychiatric illness would improve as a faculty member’s level of education increased, but it turned out to be the opposite,” she says. “Those with college-level education made more accommodations for students with psychiatric illness, than did those with university level education.”
Also worthy of note was that women faculty tended to have more positive attitudes toward psychiatric illness, than did their male counterparts.
Keefe’s research showed that faculty were more accepting and accommodating of mental illness when they were told the name of the condition, but the level of detail provided beyond that had little to no bearing on improving attitudes.
“Faculty perceive that they need all this additional information about a mental illness, however the research shows that attitudes became more positive when we named the disability, but the amount of additional details and information provided beyond that didn’t make a difference,” she says.
Attitudes were more positive among newer faculty than faculty with more experience, and, as might be expected, faculty who had previously taught a student with a psychiatric illness or those who had even minor amounts of training in the area of mental illness also had more positive attitudes toward these students. Faculty with knowledge about the services available to students with disabilities, knowledge about the institution’s policies and procedures concerning students with disabilities, and those with knowledge about the Human Rights Code, were also more positive.
“We set out to answer several questions when we began this survey and we discovered that, yes, there is a greater stigma toward students with psychiatric disabilities than there is toward those with physical, sensory or learning disabilities. We found out that disclosing a disability was more beneficial to a student than not disclosing it, and we discovered that when disclosing a disability, it was most beneficial for students with psychiatric disabilities, and this is contrary to what most students with this kind of disability believe.”
Keefe and others involved with disability services at College of the North Atlantic are currently working on a faculty training session that can be delivered on-line or in person that they hope will be implemented for all new faculty.
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For more information contact:
Stephen Lee
Manager of Marketing and Communications
College of the North Atlantic
Email: stephen.lee@cna.nl.ca