Impact of the mass media OBERTAMENT campaign on the levels of stigma among the population of Catalonia, Spain

Abstract

Reducing public stigma could improve patients' access to care, recovery and social integration.The aim of the study was to evaluate a mass media intervention which aimed to reduce the mental-health related stigma among the general population in Catalonia (Spain). We conducted a cross-sectional population-based survey of a representative sample of the Catalan noninstitutionalized adult population (n=1,019). We assessed campaign awareness, attitudes to people with mental illness (CAMI) and intended behaviour (RIBS). To evaluate the association between campaign awareness and stigma, multivariable regression models were used. Over 20% of respondents recognized the campaign when prompted, and 11% when unprompted.Campaign aware individuals had better attitudes on the benevolence subscale of the CAMI than unaware individuals (p=0.009). No significant differences in authoritarianism and support for community mental health care attitudes subscales were observed. The campaign aware group had better intended behaviour than the unaware group (p<0.01). The OBERTAMENT antistigma campaign had a positive impact to improve the attitudes and intended behaviour towards people with mental illness of the Catalan population. The impact on stigma was limited to attitudes related to benevolence. A wider range of anti-stigma messages could produce a stronger impact on attitudes and intended behaviour.

The Impact of Social Marketing Campaigns on Reducing Mental Health Stigma: Results From the 2009–2014 Time to Change Programme

“…This finding is in line with a recent cross-sectional study carried out in Spain [50], with a similar methodology to those adopted in our study. It also confirms the positive impact that social media can have in challenging stigma attached to mental disorders [7] and supports the findings that at a population level it is possible to obtain a pattern of benefits for positive attitude changes [24].…”

“…Our results are in line with those of the previous TTC evaluation and other anti-stigma social marketing campaigns, showing that campaign awareness represents one of the most important predictors of the efficacy of the campaign [36,50]. Moreover, this finding supports results obtained by social marketing campaigns promoted for changing behaviours related to unhealthy habits [51].…”

Attitudes towards the people with mental illness: comparison between Czech medical doctors and general population

“…Cohen's d equalled or was larger than 0.4 only at four items (One of the main causes of mental illness is a lack of self-discipline and will-power; There is something about people with mental illness that makes it easy to tell them from normal people; we have a responsibility to provide the best possible care for people with mental illness; It is frightening to think of people with mental problems living in residential neighbourhoods), which indicates moderate effect and which might suggest that the general population more than medical doctors think that people with mental health problems are easily recognizable, more dangerous, liable for their health conditions, and not deserving the best possible care available. The differences seem to be pronounced and Czech population to be more stigmatizing when compared to the population of Catalonia and England [50,51]. However, a proper comparison exceeds the scope of this paper and will be conducted and reported separately.…”

Time to Change’s social marketing campaign for a new target population: results from 2017-2019.

“…Several initiatives have been launched to combat this phenomenon in various countries (4)(5)(6)(7), among them the Time to Change programme in England (8) (https://www.time-to-change.org.uk/). Since 2009 it has aimed to be a growing social movement to change the way people think and act about mental health problems, raising awareness of what common mental health problems are, and letting the public know what they can do to help.…”