中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: This study investigated the influence of psychoeducation course on improving volunteers' attitude toward mental illness in a general hospital.Methods: Volunteers in a general hospital were recruited. They were randomly assigned to either experimental or control group. Experimental group subjects attended two hours lecture and one hour group discussion course about community psychiatry and psychiatric rehabilitation. Control group subjects attended general education course. The attitude to mental illness scale was completed before, immediately after, and after one month of education course by Experimental group. The attitude to mental illness scale was completed before and after one month by Control group.Results: Comparison of the groups indicated that significant improvement of some domains of attitude in the experimental group subjects were detected, both immediately after and after one month of education course.Conclusions: The results of this study showed that our educational course has effect in improving volunteers' attitude. The limitation of our study is the relatively short intervention times and lack of variety in teaching materials and methods. Whether long-term effect exists still need longer observation and follow up.