Australasian Psychiatry • Vol 9, No 1 • March 2001 55 Mental health literacy study of general practitioners: a comparative study in Singapore and Australia Gordon Parker, Cheng Lee, Helen Chen, Joshua Kua, Jennifer Loh and Anthony F Jorm Objective: To compare responses to a mental health literacy survey by general practitioners in Singapore and Australia. Method: Cross-sectional surveys of general practitioners were undertaken in Australia in 1996 (n = 872) and in Singapore in 1999 (n = 264). Ques- tionnaires provided vignettes of schizophrenia and depression, and sought responses to a range of information assessing mental health literacy. Results: The two groups returned generally similar responses, with high diagnostic accuracy and distinctly high agreement in judging the likely helpfulness of a range of resource people, activities and therapies. In addi- tion to a few minor differences, the Singaporean practitioners tended to view outcome for the disorders more optimistically and to differentiate less in estimating outcome for the two disorders. Conclusions: Previous reports of the responses by the Australian general practitioners had generally shown their views to be consistent with mental health professionals and, on several important parameters, discordant with the views of the Australian general public. This report highlights dis- tinct similarities in general practitioner responses across cultures. INTRODUCTION J orm and colleagues 1 defined ‘mental health literacy’ as referring to the “knowledge and beliefs about mental disorders which aid their recognition, management or prevention”. They undertook a literacy survey of a representative sample of the Australian general population, 1 focussing on depression and schizophrenia. They subsequently surveyed the views of three health professional groups, including a large sample of Australian general practitioners. 2–4 Those studies established 4 that health professionals (i.e. general practitioners, psychologists and psychiatrists) rated long-term outcome more negatively than the public and viewed discrimination as being more likely, indicating that the public had a more benign view of both conditions. Further, while the professionals viewed antidepressants as helpful for depression, the public viewed them as harmful. Conversely, the public were much more likely to view certain lifestyle interventions (e.g. vitamins and minerals, special diets) as help- ful, while professionals judged such interventions as ineffectual. 3 Jorm and colleagues 1 observed that divergent views of the public and health professionals may lead to an unwillingness to seek or accept help from professionals, although it is obviously salutary for health profes- sionals to be aware of major disjunctions between professional and pub- lic beliefs. Such disagreements most likely reflect the differing ‘worlds’ Gordon Parker MD, PhD, DSc, FRANZCP. Research Director, Institute of Mental Health, Singapore, and Professor, School of Psychiatry, University of New South Wales. Cheng Lee Psychiatrist. Institute of Mental Health, Singapore. Helen Chen Psychiatrist. Institute of Mental Health, Singapore. Joshua Kua Psychiatrist. Institute of Mental Health, Singapore. Jennifer Loh Research Assistant. Institute of Mental Health, Singapore. Anthony F Jorm Deputy Director, Psychiatric Epidemiology Research Centre, The Australian National University, Canberra, ACT. Correspondence: Prof G. Parker, Psychiatry Unit, Prince of Wales Hospital, Randwick 2031, Australia. E-mail: g.parker@unsw.edu.au PSYCHIATRY IN THE REGION