Examining Social Advocacy Attitudes as a Predictor for Mental Health Professionals' Perceptions toward People with Disabilities

Research Objectives: To investigate the relationship between clinicians' general social advocacy attitudes in relation to their perceptions of people with disabilities (PWD).

Design: This study represents a quantitative survey design in which participants provided responses to empirically validated Likert-type instruments via an online survey administered through Qualtrics. Instruments for the current study included the Social Issues Advocacy Scale (SIAS; Nilsson et al., 2011) and the Multidimensional Attitudes Scale toward People with Disabilities (MAS; Findler et al., 2007). The MAS includes three subscales: cognition, affect, and behavior. Participants also responded to a range of demographic questions. Data for this study were collected as a part of a larger data collection exploring multiple factors that may contribute to mental health professionals’ attitudes toward and their education and training experiences in working with PWD.

Setting: General community and educational spaces with mental health professionals and/or mental health professionals in training.

Participants: Mental health professionals who responded were volunteer participants (N = 229) who identified as mental health professionals in practice or in training. Participants average age was 37.6 years old, and the sample was majority racially White and majority self-identified as female.

Interventions: Not applicable

Main Outcome Measures: Researchers’ a priori hypothesis was that general social justice attitudes would predict more favorable attitudes toward people with disabilities among mental health professionals in this study.

Results: Preliminarily, simple linear regression models were used to test if social advocacy attitudes (SIAS scores) explained mental health professionals’ attitudes toward PWD (MAS subscale scores). The results of the regressions indicated that social advocacy attitudes explained 12.1% of the variation only in mental health professionals’ thoughts about social interactions of PWD (MAS-Cognition scores) [F(1, 214) = 29.37, p < .001].

Conclusions: Stronger social advocacy attitudes among participants in this sample are associated with more favorable thoughts about PWD but not necessarily behaviors or affect. These findings indicate that general beliefs about social advocacy in professional contexts may importantly influence mental health professionals’ perceptions of PWD.

Author(s) Disclosures: The authors listed declare no known conflicts of interest.