Public beliefs about treatment and outcome of mental disorders: a comparison of Australia and Japan
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BioMed Central
Open Access
Research article
Public beliefs about treatment and outcome of mental disorders: a comparison of Australia and Japan Anthony F Jorm*1,2, Yoshibumi Nakane3, Helen Christensen2, Kumiko Yoshioka3, Kathleen M Griffiths2 and Yuji Wata4 Address: 1ORYGEN Research Centre, Department of Psychiatry, University of Melbourne, Locked Bag 10, Parkville, Victoria 3052, Australia, 2Centre for Mental Health Research, Australian National University, Canberra, ACT 0200, Australia, 3Department of Social Work, The Faculty of Human Sociology, Nagasaki International University, 2825-7 Huis Ten Bosch-cho, Sasebo-shi, Nagasaki, 859-3298, Japan and 4Department of Human Studies, Bunkyo Gakuin University,1196 Kamekubo, Oi-machi, Iruma-gun, Saitama 356-8533, Japan Email: Anthony F Jorm* - [email protected]; Yoshibumi Nakane - [email protected]; Helen Christensen - [email protected]; Kumiko Yoshioka - [email protected]; Kathleen M Griffiths - [email protected]; Yuji Wata - [email protected] * Corresponding author
Published: 09 July 2005 BMC Medicine 2005, 3:12
doi:10.1186/1741-7015-3-12
Received: 20 January 2005 Accepted: 09 July 2005
This article is available from: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/3/12 © 2005 Jorm et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Abstract Background: Surveys of the public in a number of countries have shown poor recognition of mental disorders and beliefs about treatment that often diverge from those of health professionals. This lack of mental health literacy can limit the optimal use of treatment services. Australia and Japan are countries with very different mental health care systems, with Japan emphasising hospital care and Australia more oriented to community care. Japan is also more collectivist and Australia more individualist in values. These differences might influence recognition of disorders and beliefs about treatment in the two countries. Methods: Surveys of the public were carried out in each country using as similar a methodology as feasible. In both countries, household interviews were carried out concerning beliefs in relation to one of four case vignettes, describing either depression, depression with suicidal thoughts, early schizophrenia or chronic schizophrenia. In Australia, the survey involved a national sample of 3998 adults aged 18 years or over. In Japan, the survey involved 2000 adults aged between 20 and 69 from 25 regional sites spread across the country. Results: The Japanese public were found to be more reluctant to use psychiatric labels, particularly for the depression cases. The Japanese were also more reluctant to discuss mental disorders with others outside the family. They had a strong belief in counsellors, but not in GPs. They generally believe i
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