Survey Data and Analysis

I conducted a survey asking people about their reactions to mental illness symptoms, how they feel people react to their symptoms, their estimations on mental illness statistics, and if they have a mental illness themselves. All of these questions combined into an enormous amount of data on the subject, all of which allowed me to make analysis on the subject.

In the social sciences there is this study conducted about the max amount of meaningful relationships in a persons life, which is called Dunbar's number or the rule of 150. It is generally supported and when it is disputed it is often in favor of more people being allowed in the circle of people. Why is this important? If we use Dunbar's number and the lowest statistic about mental illness which I found (around 1/5 of people having a mood disorder, the highest being around 1/2 of adults having a mental illness) then by that logic everyone should know at least 30 people with a mental illness. However as shown in my graphs below, not enough people thought or did for sure know more than 10 people who do or may have a mental illness, let alone 30. The first graph relating to the amount who have told their diagnosis shows that people are not willing to talk about their mental health with others, while the second graph shows the general lack of ability to spot the symptoms of mental illness in others. The lack of general information and will to talk about these subjects, considering the prevalence of these problems in our society today, is quite troubling and problematic for society as a whole.

The number of people with a mood or anxiety disorders were very high, so much so that the only for sure no's had around 20% on both graphs. There is the problem of many people not getting diagnosed, but even if you only count the professional diagnosis' both were above 30%. This illustrates that the data about the percentage of people having a mental illness isn't out of date. I had predicted that there would be a similar number to the initial statistics I had gathered but I hadn't thought about how many would be completely unsure about if they had a mental illness or not.

The symptoms section I had no real information on because symptoms are too vast for most mental illness'. I gathered many results on the more "popular" ones. The results only have a few "None of the above"'s; which is interesting because around 20% said they did not have a mental illness. This illustrates that while many do not have mental illness this can make it harder to recognize it in other's due to others having symptoms despite not having the illness.

Each pie chart is in the perspective of loved ones reacting to someone who has mental illness' symptoms. The specific type of symptoms are listed above the graph. There were many different reactions to symptoms, however I categorized them in three different categories, negative, neutral, and positive. Positive responses included reactions like helping them, figuring out whats wrong, etc. Neutral reactions consisted of generally ignoring the situation and negative reactions consisted of yelling, insulting them, or generally expressing discomfort because of their symptom. The pie charts generally consisted of dad I predicted, I thought that overall most people would like to help when it comes to mental illness and mental illness symptoms, though some symptoms that they didn't know how to react to or which made them uncomfortable would be ignored. All of which is shown in the data below.

The bar graphs are from the perspective of those experiencing symptoms of mental illness and how they feel people react to their symptoms. The far left (Number 1) is them feeling very supported where conversely the far right (Number 5) is feeling discouraged. This data also correlated with my predictions. I hypothesized that the more "palatable" symptoms and/or the ones people know how to react properly to people will feel very supported whereas conversely those that are harder to deal with, make people uncomfortable, etc; make those experiencing the symptoms discouraged.