Mental health professionals and the general public have generally held differing attitudes toward mental illness. As part of a needs assessment survey, 102 persons (20 service providers, 20 referral persons, and 62 potential consumers) were interviewed concerning their views of mental health problems and services. Respondents first listed examples of problems existing in their community and then judged the similarity between problems on the comprehensive list. Multidimensional scaling techniques indicated that each of the groups was organizing its thinking about mental health problems along three dimensions: personal, institutional, and chronological. The dimensions were weighted differently by each of the three groups. Service providers placed more emphasis on the 'personal' dimension, potential consumers on the 'institutional' dimension, and referral persons on the 'chronological' dimension. While the groups seemed to have common grounds for communication about mental health issues, they appeared to disagree about priorities in mental health planning. (Author/BMW)