Police Attitudes Toward Mental Illness and Psychiatric Patients in Israel
R. Kimhi, Y. Barak, J. Gutman, Y. Melamed, M. Zohar and I. Barak,
Journal of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law
26(4): 625-630, 1998.
The attitude of the public toward mental illness and toward psychiatric patients
raises a serious and sensitive issue that indirectly affects the development of community mental
health services. Most citizens feel that there is an association between mental illness and dangerous
or violent behavior. Studies undertaken among police personnel in the 1970s demonstrated that their
attitudes were similar to those of the general public in Israel. The objective of the present study was
to assess the attitudes of police officers toward mental illness and psychiatric patients by means of
a self-report questionnaire. Ninety-three policemen from five police stations within the Y. Abarbanel
Mental Health Center catchment area participated in the study. All were young males (average age
32.1 years) and 75 percent had a high school education or higher. More than half (54.5%) had
personally known a psychiatric patient in the past, and 20.4 percent of the police personnel graded
mental illness as the severest form of disease in medicine. A minority (14.3%) of policemen agreed
with the statement: "A psychiatric hospital should be fenced and manned by guards." One-third did
not know whether psychiatric patients are dangerous. We conclude that training of police officers
is called for to effect changes in their misconceptions about psychiatric patients. Psychoeducation
may lead to improved handling by the police of incidents involving the mentally ill.