A cross-cultural study of employers' concerns about hiring people with psychotic disorder: implications for recovery.
BACKGROUND
Employment discrimination is considered as a major impediment to community integration for people with serious mental illness, yet little is known about how the problem manifests differently across western and non-western societies. We developed a lay model based on Chinese beliefs and values in terms of Confucianism, Taoism, Buddhism, and folk religions which may be used to explain cross-cultural variation in mental illness stigma, particularly in the arena of employment discrimination. In this study, we tested this lay approach by comparing employers' concerns about hiring people with psychotic disorder for entry-level jobs in US and China.


METHODS
One hundred employers (40 from Chicago, 30 from Hong Kong, and 30 from Beijing) were randomly recruited from small size firms and interviewed by certified interviewers using a semi-structured interview guide designed for this study. Content analysis was used to derive themes, which in turn were compared across the three sites using chi-square tests.


RESULTS
Analyses reveal that employers express a range of concerns about hiring an employee with mental illness. Although some concerns were raised with equal frequency across sites, comparisons showed that, relative to US employers, Chinese employers were significantly more likely to perceive that people with mental illness would exhibit a weaker work ethic and less loyalty to the company. Comparison of themes also suggests that employers in China were more people-oriented while employers in US were more task-oriented.


CONCLUSIONS
Cultural differences existed among employers which supported the lay theory of mental illness.
Tsang
Hector W H
HW
Dept. of Rehabilitation Sciences, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong. rshtsang@inet.polyu.edu.hk
Angell
Beth
B
Corrigan
Patrick W
PW
Lee
Yueh-Ting
YT
Shi
Kan
K
Lam
Chow S
CS
Jin
Shenghua
S
Fung
Kevin M T
KM
D000328:Adult; D044466:Asian People / Q000208:ethnology; D001290:Attitude; D002016:Buddhism; D002681:China; D003289:Convalescence; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003469:Culture; D004650:Employee Performance Appraisal; D004651:Employment; D005260:Female; D006723:Hong Kong; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010559:Personnel Management; D011618:Psychotic Disorders; D014481:United States