2010年卫生模式调查中报告的精神卫生专科治疗

Background:

A way to measure whether negative attitudes toward people with mental illness are being changed is to measure how many persons in the general population report seeing a mental health specialist for personal mental health conditions. The HealthStyles Survey is a large, private, proprietary, national mail panel marketing survey done annually to evaluate attitudes and beliefs about chronic and infectious disease and behaviors, exposure to health information and health communication campaigns, and self-reported symptoms, risk factors, diseases, and disorders. The responses of adults to the 2010 edition of this survey were analyzed to determine if such attitude change has occurred.

Methods:

The 2010 HealthStyles survey was mailed to 6255 respondents who were designed to be representative of the US population and weighted to match the 2009 Current Population Survey estimates for age, gender, marital status, education, and race-ethnicity. Sixty-seven percent (4184 persons over age 18years) responded.

Results:

Most respondents agreed that persons with mental illness would improve if they received treatment and support (68% of respondents) and that treatment can help people with mental illness lead a normal life (65%). Twenty-four percent of respondents reported having one or more of eight mental health conditions over the previous year. About 42% reported having more than one of these conditions. The most prevalent diseases were depression and anxiety, accounting for nearly 80% of all reports. However, only 17% of those with a single self-reported condition and 46% of those with multiple self-reported conditions consulted a mental health provider over the previous year. Most of those individuals made fewer than six visits.

Conclusions:

Although most of the general public believe that treatment can improve the lives of people with mental health conditions, many of those with such problems did not seek the care of a mental health specialist. Use of the HealthStyles Survey helped to assess whether specific health reform policies and activities were changing attitudes about mental health treatment and treatment-seeking behaviors of persons with mental health conditions.