Is it correct to say?

[perov]

Mind-splitting looks to me like splitting, dividing people: Some people were happy with the changes, others took it as a tragedy.

Yes, exactly so. But here is something else meant. The sentence about the split in people's conscionsness is followed by this: "At the same time, it was said that perestroika meant renovation and development of socialism. "
Here is more of the context:

"6 years of intensive brainwashing by mass media destroyed habitual stable guiding ideas {frame of reference - ?}. In upper layers of consciousness socialist clichés were replaced by the opposite ones. But big changes could not take place due to a lack of time (let alone deeper reasons and thousand years-old cultural traditions. The mind {consciosness} became split."