Attitudes toward mental illness in the working class.

By reviewing both the anecdotal and experimental data on attitudes toward mental illness and assessing the popularized cultural portrayal of this affliction, the authors have shown that the working class, per se, maintains a unique and characteristic response to such illness as differentiated from the middle class. Working-class people are likely to be authoritarian, less accepting of and more exclusionary toward those diagnosed as "psychologically sick," and subsequently less amenable to psychotherapeutic intervention than their more affluent counterparts. It is suggested that clinicians be sensitized to this empirical socioeconomic differential in attitude and as such monitor their service delivery approach accordingly.