BACKGROUND:

It is a widely shared belief that an increase in mental health literacy will result in an improvement of attitudes towards people with mental illness.

AIMS:

To examine how the German public's causal attributions of schizophrenia and their desire for social distance from people with schizophrenia developed over the 1990s.

METHOD:

A trend analysis was carried out using data from two representative population surveys conducted in the Lander constituting the former Federal Republic of Germany in 1990 and 2001.

RESULTS:

Parallel to an increase in the public's tendency to endorse biological causes, an increase in the desire for social distance from people with schizophrenia was found.

CONCLUSIONS:

The assumption underlying current anti-stigma programmes that there is a positive relationship between endorsing biological causes and the acceptance of people with mental illness appears to be problematic.