Mental illnesses affect one in five people in France and will be the leading cause of disability by 2020. However, these pathologies that are still too often assimilated to “madness” are still unknown to the French. In 2009, 47% of French people associated psychiatric illnesses with negative representations. What is the general public’s view of the mental illnesses behind which we find bipolar disorders, schizophrenia, high-functioning autism or Asperger’s syndrome, resistant depression, suicidal behavior, resistant OCD and stress? Posttraumatic ?
Mental illness and Alzheimer’s are still confused
To answer this question, Ipsos Santé carried out for the FondaMental Foundation (scientific cooperation network in mental health) and Klesia an exclusive survey on the relationship of French people to mental health.
While more than one in two French people (58%) say they are concerned by the subject, 46% spontaneously associate mental pathologies with neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s (38%), Parkinson’s disease. Two out of five French people compare mental illness to madness, while the terms “crazy” and “crazy” are spoken by 7% of respondents.
What is the nature of these pathologies? What are the risks they entail? What are the modes of access to care or the actions to be taken in the event of suspicious disorders? These are the questions to which the general public has no answer today.
According to mental illness specialists, this lack of information would be specific to France and would have an impact on the very treatment of illnesses. All are calling for an educational effort that would be similar to what has already been done on cancer, obesity or AIDS. Three types of diseases, better known, on which the view of the French has changed a lot over the past twenty years.
