The purpose of this investigation was to determine the psychological meaning of some concepts related to mental health and mental illness. The semantic network methodology, considered as the most adequate technique to approach the representation of information in the memory, was used. Its purpose was to obtain a vision of the meaning, for an specific group, of nine linguistic figures related to mental health and illness, by means of the consensus conceptualization made upon them. The concepts selected were: mental health, mental illness, madness, depression, anguish, neurosis, psychosis, psychologist and psychiatrist. The basic premise is that, by exploring the psychological meaning of the concepts, an approach to its social representation will be obtained and, as a consequence, some of their behavioral patterns with regards to them. For that purpose, a sample of 160 students was selected from basic, medium and professional public schools in Mexico City. They were asked to elaborate a list of words defining each concept. The defining words obtained were cuantitatively and cualitatively analized, and then integrated in the form of semantic networks, thus providing an approach to the social representation of the concepts within the groups investigated. In general terms, a great semantic richness for all the concepts was obtaneided. Considering the sex as a variable, some significative diferences were found among groups only in the primary school, where women had a wider semantic management of all the concepts. However, these differences disappeared in high school students, which indicates that in higher educational leves, the sex is not an important variable in relation to the concepts investigated. As for the educational level, the semantic richness was incremented along the ascending school grades. Those diferences were significative in the four educational leves studied in all the concepts. The results obtaneid showed that from childhood, people have a clear and concrete conception of some concepts related to mental health and mental illness, particularly those of a general kind. However, more specific concepts are little understood by children, who define them better during the first years of highschool, consolidating a more complete semantic network in the last year of preparatory school and at the university. Considering these results, it is suggested that it is fundamental to develop educational programs for mental health at these school leves. Finally, at a cualitative level, the results obtained are valuable, as the basis for an approximation to the social representation of the concepts, which will allow the development of more adequate instruments to study the beliefs, and atitudes on this respect, as well as the specific needs of information and education in the investigated population.
