The Structure and Content of Social Representations of Lawyers, Psychologists and Journalists about Mentally Ill People

Abstract

We studied the structure and content of social representations of the mentally ill people among the various professional groups of young people. This study involved 60 people aged 20 to 30 years (50% of respondents were girls, 50% were boys), specializing in psychology, law and journalism. We used semi-structured interview, associative method with elements of ranking and emotional attitude, and drawing techniques. We tested the following hypotheses: 1) the social representations of the mentally ill people contain elements with negative valence in all investigated occupational groups of young people; 2) social representations of the mentally ill people are based on such constructs as "otherness"; treatment (hospital, pills, experts); disease (synonyms, names of diseases, symptoms); the attitude of society; 3) social representations of the mentally ill people of lawyers and journalists are simpler and more consistent than those of psychologists. These hypotheses were supported by the empirical results

Keywords

• social representations
• mentally ill people
• structure of social representations