OBJECTIVE: This paper aimed to describe and correlate the knowledge, attitudes and behaviors towards mental illness among adult college students.

METHODOLOGY: Experts from the Department of Psychiatry reviewed the Mental Health Knowledge Schedule (MAKS), Community Attitude towards the Mental Illness III (CAMI-III) and Reported and Intended Behavior Scale (RIBS) appropriateness for the intended population. These were administered to randomly selected 260 adult college students from a selected university in Metro Manila. Data was analyzed using mean, frequencies, item analysis and correlation coefficient.

RESULTS: Mean score for knowledge was 48.17 of 60. Mean scores for authoritarianism, social restrictiveness, benevolence and community mental health ideology were 21.67, 18.82, 43.26 and 41.38 of 50. Mean score for nondiscriminatory behavior was 17.39 of 20. Nondiscriminatory behavior positively correlated with benevolence (r=0.34) and community mental health ideology (r=0.45). Nondiscriminatory behavior negatively correlated with authoritarianism (r=-0.34) and social restrictiveness (r=-0.39). Knowledge positively correlated with benevolence (r=0.3) and negatively correlated with social restrictiveness (r=-0.35).

CONCLUSION: College students have high mental literacy but were confused with stress and grief. They were tolerant, respectful and inclusive of the mentally ill's role in society but half viewed mental hospital as indispensable and were guarded regarding the mentally ill's role in young children, and a quarter had fallacies with mental illness recognition and etiology. Educational interventions only improve some attitudes but have no effect on discriminatory behaviors. Instead, behavioral interventions holistically improve attitudes. Compared with previous generations, the challenge in reducing discrimination is to improve attitudes instead of knowledge. Hence, stigma may not only vary by culture, but may also vary by generation.