The effect of beliefs and prejudices towards people with mental illness on stigma

Objective: The aim of the study was to determine individuals' beliefs and prejudices towards mental illnesses and people with mental illnesses, and to reveal the relationships between these variables and psychological stigma levels and the affecting factors. Materials and Methods: In this research, where the variables were described using the relational screening model in line with the quantitative research type, simple random method was used in sample selection and a total of 564 people, 352 women and 212 men, were reached. The sample consisted of 501 people who met the inclusion criteria for the study. In the study, "Personal Information Form" prepared by the researcher in line with the literature, "Beliefs Towards Mental Illness Scale", "Prejudice Scale towards People with Mental Illness" and "Stigma Scale" were used as data collection tools. IBM SPSS 28 package program was used to analyze the data; t-test analyzes and One-Way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) were performed to determine differences between groups, correlation analysis to determine relationships between variables, and regression analysis to determine the effect of independent variables on the dependent variable. In the statistical analysis of the research findings, the significance level was accepted as p<0.05. Results: 62.7% of the participants are women, 43.7% are between the ages of 26-34, 50.5% are married, 78.2% have a nuclear family structure, 73.3% have a middle level income and 62.3 of them had a bachelor's level of education and 80.4% of the participants declared that they were employed. 67.7% of the individuals stated that there was no person in their immediate circle, 80.6% stated that there were no individuals with mental illness in their first-degree relatives, and 57.5% stated that they had previously obtained information about mental illnesses. It was determined that beliefs about mental illnesses and prejudices against individuals with mental illness did not show a statistically significant difference in terms of gender, age, and educational status, but the tendency to psychological stigmatization varied depending on these variables (p<0.05). Additionally, statistically significant positive relationships were detected between beliefs and prejudices, between beliefs and stigmatization tendency, and between prejudices and stigmatization (p<0.001). It was determined that beliefs had a statistically significant contribution to the emergence of stigma (p=0.000). Conclusion: It has been found that sociodemographic characteristics are not very effective in determining beliefs and prejudices, but are effective in determining the level of stigmatization; It was concluded that men, the elderly and individuals with low education levels have a tendency to have high levels of stigmatization, as negative beliefs increase, prejudices increase, and as negative beliefs and prejudices increase, stigmatization increases, but beliefs predict higher levels of stigmatization. In this regard, suggestions are presented for interventions aimed at changing widespread negative beliefs in society and for future studies on the subject.