Could a short training intervention modify opinions about mental illness? A case study on French health professionals

Abstract

BackgroundIn France, negative views on schizophrenia are pervasive, even among health professionals. Prior research suggests that the level of prejudice is lower when the illness is described with the example of a specific individual. This finding highlights the importance of designing local, targeted destigmatization campaigns. The present study aims to evaluate the benefits of a short intervention offering contact with psychiatric services users on reducing the stigma about mentally ill people, among a sample of Health Administrators and Students.MethodsData were collected before (Time 0) and after (Time 1) a short training intervention program proposed to a sample of 121 Health Services Administrators and Students. This four-day workshop explained the multiple causes of mental illness, the clinical implications of psychosis and various mental disorders, the subjective experience of mental illness and the legal evolutions of users’ rights. The intervention was strongly based on live testimonies from users. Using a French version of the Attitudes to Mental Illness scale, we compared attitudes before and after the training intervention among 58 trainees having answered our questionnaire at Time 0 and Time 1.ResultsAfter the training, a significantly lower endorsement of stigmatizing statements compared to baseline was found in one third (9 out of 27) of the items. These results plead for further research about the potential benefits of initiatives like this short intervention program on significantly reducing stigmatizing attitudes towards mentally ill people among Health Administrators and Students.ConclusionsThe present study highlights the importance of further studying the effect of targeted interventions that offer first hand contact with persons with mental illness.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12888-017-1296-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Health care providers and people with mental illness: An integrative review on anti-stigma interventions

“…In addition to direct social contact with in-person live interactions between people, studies that include filmed interventions, which provide indirect social contact, are also effective at reducing stigma (Clement et al, 2012; Faigin & Stein, 2008). This data is corroborated by the results from two studies included in this review, which led to a reduction in stigma levels among participants (Hawke et al, 2013; Villani and Kovess, 2017).…”

“…In addition, a film with a character living with mental illness was shown, with the opportunity for discussion after the film. This study highlighted the importance of real narratives from people with lived experience and encouraged the use of appropriate interventions for a specific target group (Villani and Kovess, 2017).…”

French Translation and Validation of Three Scales Evaluating Stigma in Mental Health

“…Recently, the CAMI scale was used to study an anti-stigma campaign in France that measured changes on the opinions about mental illness in French health professionals after receiving a short training intervention program. This study showed no publication of psychometric data ( 14 ). Another recent study validated in French the Stigma scale, which measures perceived stigma.…”

“…Mental Health Knowledge Schedule (MAKS) ( 10 ) and the Reported and Intended Behavior Scale (RIBS) ( 11 ) were then developed to assess knowledge and behavior, in order to measure every dimension of stigma as defined by Thornicroft ( 12 ). In previous studies these three scales showed to be sensitive to anti-stigma centered actions ( 13 , 14 ). Further details on these three scales are provided in the Section “ Materials and Methods ” of this article.…”

Human rights of people with mental illness diagnosis: perceptions among service users, family members and health professionals in Tunisia

“…The absence of such an education leads to major stigma, and thereby to discrimination, and can represent an obstacle to the implementation of the most human rights-oriented legislations (Freeman et al , 2005). There are examples of training interventions which have succeeded in decreasing stigma among health professionals (Villani and Kovess-Masfety, 2017). A training course on the CRPD and the QualityRights toolkit was organized in Elrazi after this study and showed significant differences in the awareness of rights by the participants before and after the one-week course (Carta et al , 2020).…”