TPC-Journal-V1-Issue1

18 The Professional Counselor \ Volume 1, Issue 1 Of particular interest was how the gender of mental health professionals impacted desired social distance towards adults with mental illness. There was a significant main effect found for status as well as for gender. This finding is consistent with previous literature (Marie & Miles, 2008; Phelan & Basow, 2007) that suggested that women desired less social distance than men from those diagnosed with mental illness. In addition, there was an interaction between the two variables. The social distance scores of women were highly similar between mental health professionals and non-mental health professionals. For men, however, there was a substantive gap based on status. Men who were not mental health professionals desired the highest level of social distance. Although there is a within-group difference, this suggests that targeted advocacy efforts might be tailored to men in the general population who seem to desire a greater social distance from people diagnosed with mental illness. This study looked at social distance attitudes of participants as one group in order to explore the relationship social distance had with other attitudes towards mental illness. It seems that social distance and other attitudes towards mental illness are related. All correlations were in the hypothesized direction. There was a significant negative relationship between social distance and both Authoritarianism and Social Restrictiveness. There was a significant positive relationship between social distance and both Benevolence and Community Mental Health Ideology. This is because higher social distance scores indicate less social distance while higher mean scores on the CAMI indicate more of each attitude. Scores on the more negative attitude subscale of the CAMI, such as Authoritarianism and Social Restrictiveness were related to more social distance, while more positive attitudes on the CAMI such as Benevolence and Community Mental Health Ideology were related to less social distance. This implies that social distance, or proximity to adults with mental illness, can be related to attitudes. People who hold more negative attitudes towards mental illness, such as Authoritarianism (belief that people with mental illness are inferior) and Social Restrictiveness (limiting the rights for people with mental illness) might manifest this in behavior such as the desire for more social distance. More positive attitudes towards mental illness such as Benevolence (a kindly or sympathetic attitude towards mental illness) and Mental Health Ideology (the belief that mental illness deserves treatment but “not in my back yard”) are related to the desire for less social distance. Those who hold a more positive attitude towards adults with mental illness will tend to be more comfortable with situations such as working at the same place of employment or maintaining a friendship with someone with a mental illness. Since the two constructs are related, perhaps advocacy efforts need to be geared towards both attitudes and social distance in order to combat mental illness stigma. For example, only focusing on attitudes might miss the proximity associated with stigma toward an adult with mental illness. These efforts might especially be geared towards those in the general population, since this study suggested that non-mental health professionals and students desired the most social distance. Mental health professionals of any type can begin to consider social distance as it relates to attitudes towards adults with mental illness, since the construct of social distance can be used to assess expected discriminatory behavior towards adults with mental illness (Baumann, 2007; Link & Phelan, 2001; Marie & Miles, 2008). As well, professional counselors might begin to explore their own comfort level with proximity and closeness to adults with mental illness, since it relates to attitudes. Counselor educators might consider including people with mental illness as a marginalized group in multicultural training and challenging students to examine their knowledge and self-awareness related to mental illness. Although results of this study suggested that mental health professionals desired less social distance than those in the general population, other recent research has suggested that it would be too simplistic to assume that mental health professionals do not indeed hold stigmatizing attitudes (Nordt et al., 2006). Limitations and Future Directions As with all research, the current study has limitations that both contextualize the findings and provide direction for future research efforts. First, replication with larger and more diverse samples is warranted. It is unknown the extent to which respondents in this study differ from non-respondents. In particular, it is possible that there is a systematic bias (either positive or negative) among those who chose to respond to the study request. Future researchers should include a more racially diverse sample, as these findings are based on the responses of participants who largely identified as Caucasian. Additionally, replication and extension efforts are warranted that use alternative methods of measuring social distance, which is important for at least two reasons. First, the current study relied solely on self-report and, although