Stigma of mental illness and its association with empathic abilities in mental health trainees.

Abstract

The study aimed to assess stigmatizing attitudes, affects, and behavioral intentions toward patients with mental illness in mental health trainees and to address the relationship between these stigmatizing factors and empathic abilities. A correlational cross-sectional study was conducted. A survey was sent to mental health trainees. It comprised the Attribution Questionnaire assessing nine stigma-related attitudes, affects, and behavioral intentions and the Interpersonal Reactivity Index evaluating self-oriented and other-oriented cognitive and affective empathy dimensions. The sample included 160 mental health trainees. Hierarchical regression analysis revealed that mental health trainees' empathic abilities were independent predictors of anger, pity, help, and segregation. Participants with stronger perspective-taking were more likely to endorse helping, and those with stronger empathic concern reported less anger, more pity, more helping intentions, and were less likely to endorse segregation. Participants with higher personal distress scores reported more anger toward patients with mental illness. These results shed light to the role-played by empathy dimensions in predicting stigma factors of the responsibility model. Other-oriented cognitive and affective empathy were associated with positive attitudes and less discrimination toward patients with mental illness. Personal distress, a self-oriented affective empathy dimension, was a positive predictor of anger. Promoting mental health trainees' empathic abilities may positively impact their stigmatizing attitudes toward patients with mental illness.