ABSTRACT
Since the late 1940s, when the first attitudinal studies were designed, popular conceptions of mental illness have become a subject of great concern and research effort (Bhugra, 1989). In North America, Canada and to a more modest extent Britain a voluminous literature has appeared, scattered among a variety of different journals and which includes material from such wide-ranging sources as anthropology (Westbrook et al, 1993; Haldipur, 1984), history (Prins, 1984; Kroll and Backrach, 1982), sociology (Scheff, 1966), psychiatry (Szasz, 1985, 1961) and social-psychology (Furnham and Bower, 1992).
