Shift's national survey into attitudes towards mental illness has been published.

Since March 1994, the Department of Health has placed a set of questions on TNS’s Face-to-Face Consumer Omnibus about public attitudes towards mental illness. From 1994 to 1997 the questions were asked on an annual basis and then every third year up until 2003.

Since 2007 Shift has carried out the survey annually. The surveys serve as a benchmark, enabling measurement of whether attitudes are improving or worsening over time. The questionnaire included a number of statements about mental illness. Respondents were asked to indicate how much they agreed or disagreed with each statement.

Key points from the report:

• People are broadly sympathetic towards people with a mental illness.
• However, some attitudes towards people with mental illness are worse compared to when the Department of Health first commissioned the poll in 1994 whilst a number have improved. Several attitudes that had worsened over the period up until 1997 have since improved.
• Attitudes to a number of statements have changed between 2009 and 2010.
• Opinions on some statements changed towards greater tolerance, for example:
  ‘Locating mental health facilities in a residential area downgrades the neighbourhood’ - agreement with this statement decreased from 21% to 18%.
• Some opinions moved more in favour of integrating people with mental illness into the community, for example: ‘Residents have nothing to fear from people coming into their neighbourhood to obtain mental health services’ – agreement with this statement increased from 62% to 66%.
• On one item though, opinions moved less in favour of integration: ‘Mental hospitals are an outdated means of treating people with mental illness’ – agreement with this statement fell from 37% in 2009 to 33% in 2010.

Find out more about research commissioned by Shift.

Download the full 2010 report from the Department of Health website
See our Research page for links to the full versions of previous attitude surveys

Tags: shift, research

Do you watch TV and ever want to scream at the television because the portrayals of mental health and mental illness are so terrible? Or have you seen something that you thought was really good? 

Shift has commissioned research into TV portrayals of mental health problems. The researchers want to hear from you about what drama or entertainment programmes in particular you think they should look at. The research is going to be used to persuade programme-makers to portray mental health problems more realistically and avoid relying on stereotypes.

Email antonia.furmston@nmhdu.org.uk with your suggestions. Make sure you include the programme name, what happened, and as much detail as you can about what channel it was on and when it was broadcast.

Also, if you'd like to speak to the researchers as part of their investigation into people's views about TV portrayals, let us know.

Television photograph by Stefan Holodnick. Used under a Creative Commons licence.

Tags: media, research

Shift's national survey into attitudes towards mental illness has been published.

Find out more about research commissioned by Shift.

Download the full 2009 report from the Department of Health website
See our Research page for links to the full versions of previous attitude surveys

Tags: shift, research

Mind Over Matter 2 is Shift's second report analysing media reporting of mental illness, following on from the first report which looked at news coverage in 2005. It serves as a benchmark to show whether reporting is improving. This report, which looks at coverage from March and October 2006, shows there is a long way to go. 

A follow up report will be published later in 2008.

Download Mind Over Matter 2 from the Shift Media Network.
Download Mind Over Matter 1 from the Shift Media Network.

Find out more about research commissioned by Shift.

Tags: shift, media, research, mindovermatter