• Stefania Mannarini and Marilisa Boffo.
• Department of Philosophy, Sociology, Education, and Applied Psychology (FISPPA), University of Padova, via Venezia 8, 35131, Padova, Italy, stefania.mannarini@unipd.it.
• Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2015 Jan 1; 50 (1): 27-37.

PurposeMental illness stigma is a serious societal problem and a critical impediment to treatment seeking for mentally ill people. To improve the understanding of mental illness stigma, this study focuses on the simultaneous analysis of people's aetiological beliefs, attitudes (i.e. perceived dangerousness and social distance), and recommended treatments related to several mental disorders by devising an over-arching latent structure that could explain the relations among these variables.MethodsThree hundred and sixty university students randomly received an unlabelled vignette depicting one of six mental disorders to be evaluated on the four variables on a Likert-type scale. A one-factor Latent Class Analysis (LCA) model was hypothesized, which comprised the four manifest variables as indicators and the mental disorder as external variable.ResultsThe main findings were the following: (a) a one-factor LCA model was retrieved; (b) alcohol and drug addictions are the most strongly stigmatized; (c) a realistic opinion about the causes and treatment of schizophrenia, anxiety, bulimia, and depression was associated to lower prejudicial attitudes and social rejection.ConclusionBeyond the general appraisal of mental illness an individual might have, the results generally point to the acknowledgement of the specific features of different diagnostic categories. The implications of the present results are discussed in the framework of a better understanding of mental illness stigma.

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