NCJ Number
175261
Date Published
1997
Length
236 pages
Annotation
This study clarifies the nature of implicit theories currently held about distinct types of psychopathological and criminal behavior by respondents who represent a range of agencies: the general lay population (students and politicians), criminal justice (police), mental health (mental health practitioners), and social services (social workers and probation officers).
Abstract
This study was in the form of a factorial experimental survey design that used the mail questionnaire data-gathering technique. Semi-structured interviews were also conducted in order to provide supplementary qualitative data. Of the four case vignettes used in the experimental design, two described the key symptomatic behavior underlying the condition of paranoid schizophrenia, and two referred to the behavioral symptoms commonly associated with depressive psychosis. Each of these vignettes was further manipulated through the inclusion or otherwise of a criminal offense condition. The survey's measuring instrument, which was answered after reading a single case vignette, examined the three main scientific theories used to explain various psychopathological states -- medical (organic), moral (cognitive-behavioral), and psychosocial -- along several dimensions: etiology, behavior, treatment, function of the hospital, prognosis, and rights and duties of both the patient and society); the instrument was constructed specifically for this study. Factor analysis, performed on the questionnaire data obtained from the overall sample of 961 respondents, showed three underlying principal components: "sick" role, medical-control, and social-treatment. Using these implicit paradigms as a baseline, a multi-way analysis of variance showed highly significant differences in perception across the study's main treatment (type of mental disorder, type of criminal offense) and sociodemographic variables (age, gender, group surveyed, and previous experience of the mentally ill). The results are discussed in terms of each multiagency group's approach to the various treatment conditions as well as the theoretical and practical implications these findings may have at both a criminological and clinical level. Directions for future research are also considered. 30 tables, 9 figures, 323 references, a subject index, and appended supplementary tables