Illness representations about schizophrenia and bipolar disorder held by French people without a mental disorder

Introduction: The stigmatization of various mental disorders has been widely studied, but the common understanding of mental disorders has seldom been explored, especially for specific psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. We used the Common-Sense Model to understand and compare the general public’s multidimensional illness representations for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Methods: The sample recruited was 1,000 participants who reported no mental disorder, and their public illness representations for schizophrenia ( n = 500) and bipolar disorder ( n = 500) were assessed via an Internet survey using a modified version of the Illness Perception Questionnaire for Schizophrenia. Results: Schizophrenia was viewed as more serious, severe, and chronic than bipolar disorder, with a high impact, major consequences, and less effective treatments. Environmental and individual factors were rated higher for bipolar disorder than they were for schizophrenia, while biological functioning items were rated lower. Conclusion: Similarities between the public’s illness representations observed in this study and the representations of patients and relatives explored in previous studies confirm that illness representations are essentially guided by social communication and cultural knowledge about the relevant illness. This reinforces the need to improve social communication about mental disorders and more specifically schizophrenia.