Mental Patients' Perceptions of Illness Etiology

By means of a questionnaire, the author studied hospitalized mental patients' perceptions of the factors contributing to their illness in terms of the economic, family, and social problems they experienced. Childhood problems of all types were reported and connected to illness less frequently than were adult problems. Patients often placed various difficulties concerning worries, failures, rejections, and interpersonal conflicts in an etiological context but not those which concerned deprivations and hardships. Statistically significant relationships were observed between the number of problems that patients believed were responsible for their illness and the patients' age, marital status, diagnosis, and length of hospitalization. Type of hospital commitment was related to a lesser extent; sex, social class, and prognosis were unimportant variables.