8th Annual WML Academic Symposium

Presenter(s): Jaikeshia I. Littles
Title: Attitudes Towards Physical and Mental Illnesses
Developed under the guidance of Dr. Jutta Street , Psychology

The purpose of my project was to study and compare undergraduate students’ attitudes towards mental and physical illnesses as an attempt to detect stigmatization towards the mental illnesses. Consequently, I prepared an original survey that measured perception of threat, knowledge, empathy, and desire for social distance towards depression, schizophrenia, leukemia, and breast cancer. I hypothesized that the mental illnesses would receive the most stigma and that schizophrenia would ultimately be stigmatized the greatest compared to depression.