Mental health literacy in non-western countries: a review of the recent literature
| Published date | 03 June 2014 |
| Pages | 84-98 |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1108/MHRJ-01-2013-0004 |
| Date | 03 June 2014 |
| Author | Adrian Furnham,Aseel Hamid |
Mental health literacy in non-western
countries: a review of the recent literature
Adrian Furnham and Aseel Hamid
Professor Adrian Furnham
is based at Research
Department of Clinical,
Educational and Health
Psychology, UCL, London, UK
and Norwegian Business
School (BI), Oslo, Norway.
Dr Aseel Hamid is a Research
Worker, based at Research
Department of Clinical,
Educational and Health
Psychology,UCL, London, UK.
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to produce a comprehensive and tabulated review of the many and
scattered papers on public mental health literacy, with particular focus on people’s ability to recognise
mental illness and beliefs about the treatment.
Design/methodology/approach – This was a review and tabula study. Comprehensive tables describe
studies: the first looks at the beliefs of three different groups (the general public, students and young people)
within developed English-speaking countries, and the second on studies from non-English-speaking
countries.
Findings – Some illnesses like depression and schizophrenia are well researched and others like anxiety
or personality disorders largely ignored. The conclusion considers terminological (the loose use of different
terms), theoretical (little or no theoretical models) and methodological (heavy reliance on printed,
culture-bound vignettes) issues in the developing area of research.
Originality/value – No such review exists and this therefore should be of considerable value to people
working in the area.
Keywords Schizophrenia, Depression, Mental health literacy, Mental illness, Cross-cultural
Paper typeLiterature review
Introduction
There is a large body of research into public conceptions of mental illnesses and disorders
going back over half a century (Star, 1955). Papers are emerging at a rapid pace: for instance
four appeared in the month this paper was being finalised (Loureiro et al., 2013; Melas
et al., 2013; Mendenhall and Frauenholtz, 2013; Vijayalakshmi and Math, 2013) which
reported data from America, India, Portugal and Sweden on young people,parents of patients
and caregivers.
Over the years there are two slightly different but overlapping research traditions with regard
to this topic: public attitudes and mental health literacy. The first concerns studies of
attitudes towards people with mental disorders (Nunnally, 1961; Bhugra, 1989): that is beliefs
about what people with mental illness are like and also how they should be treated. These
studies may be about specific mental disorders, such as schizophrenia (Siegler and Osmond,
1966) and depression (Rippere, 1977) or more generally about mental illnesses. These are
nearly always large survey-based studies typical of market research or attitudinal surveys.
These studies are important as they can offer an explanation for negative and stigmatising
attitudes towards mental illness (e.g. Link et al., 1999), and for why so few of those diagnosed
seek help (Lin et al., 1996; Andrews et al., 1999). A recent review looks at public attitudes to
a range of disorders from alcoholism and anorexia nervosa to paraphilias and phobias (Furnham
and Telford, 2011).
The second approach is the term “mental health literacy” (MHL) research introduced by Jorm
et al. (1997a, c). Thisliterature supplementedthe biggerliterature on(general, physical)health
PAGE 84
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MENTAL HEALTH REVIEW JOURNAL
j
VOL. 19 NO. 2 2014, pp. 84-98, CEmerald Group Publishing Limited, ISSN 1361-9322DOI 10.1108/MHRJ-01-2013-0004
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