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Knowledge of mental illnesses: two studies using a new test

Furnham, A; Gee, M; Weis, L; (2016) Knowledge of mental illnesses: two studies using a new test. Psychiatry Research , 244 pp. 363-369. 10.1016/j.psychres.2016.06.058. Green open access

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Abstract

While the benefits of public knowledge of physical diseases are widely recognised, knowledge about mental disorders (mental health literacy, MHL) has received much less attention. This paper reports on two studies using the new Multiple-Choice Knowledge of Mental Illness Test (MC-KOMIT), a 33 item test of MHL ( Compton et al., 2011). In Study 1, we examined cross-cultural associations between country of origin and their MHL in an online sample of 250 adults. In line with previous findings, we demonstrate that British and American participants outperform respondents from India. Furthermore, males showed significantly lower MHL, but – contrary to expectations – age did not have a significant impact. Study 2 was conducted to validate and extend findings of study 1 concerning the impact of demographics and individual difference factors on MHL. Results of the second study, using American participants are consistent with findings of study 1. In addition we show that while religious beliefs may reduce MHL, higher levels of education and self-confidence are associated with higher levels of MHL.

Type: Article
Title: Knowledge of mental illnesses: two studies using a new test
Open access status: An open access version is available from UCL Discovery
DOI: 10.1016/j.psychres.2016.06.058
Publisher version: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2016.06.058
Language: English
Additional information: Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved. This manuscript version is made available under the CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)
Keywords: Science & Technology, Life Sciences & Biomedicine, Psychiatry, Health Literacy, Disorders, Beliefs, Depression, Community, Crystalised intelligence, General Knowledge, Self-Assessed intelligence, online administration
UCL classification: UCL
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences
UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > School of Life and Medical Sciences > Faculty of Brain Sciences
URI: https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1508881
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