Attitudes towards mental illness in a sample of Israeli rehabilitation workers.

Forty-six rehabilitation workers from the Tel Aviv metropolitan area were tested for their views about mentally ill people. It was found that these workers were ambiguous in their attitudes. In some respects they were more tolerant than the general Israeli population. In others, they displayed the same negative views towards the mentally ill as other researchers have found in Israeli society. This ambiguity may be due to the fact that while their professional ideology forces them to express "tolerant" opinions, they nonetheless are influenced by the attitudes prevalent in Israeli culture. Then, too, these negative attitudes may also stem from disappointing professional experience with chronic mentally ill clients. Mainsteam psychiatric professionals could assist these rahabilitation workers by offering more consultative, back-up services.