The Italian Version of the Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Healthcare Providers: Validation and Study on a Sample of Bachelor Students

Abstract

Prejudices on psychiatric disorders frequently turn into stigmatizating attitudes, also among health care providers. The Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC) was introduced in 2012 to measure stigma. No Italian versions of this tool exist so far. We wanted to investigate stigma among healthcare students in Italy, and to prepare an Italian version of the scale. A multicentric, cross-sectional study was conducted on a sample of Nursing, Physiotherapy, Occupational therapy, and Dietistics students. The Italian version of the scale was obtained through back-translation. 561 students were enrolled, median age 21 years, IQR [20;23], 62.22% females (n = 349). 262 students declared having met subjetcs affected by psychiatric disorders during their training; 50 had one or more psychiatric disorders in their lives. The Italian version proved valid and reliable. Older students had lower stigma scores. No differences existed between stigma scores according to gender and personal experience of mental illness.

Factor structure of The Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers and psychometric properties of its Hungarian version

“…In Canada the coefficients were higher than in our study [19]. The internal consistency was found to be good in the Italian study [21].…”

“…The construct of the OMS-HC has already been studied in some countries [17,[19][20][21][22]; however, this is the first study that examines its 15-item version on practising psychiatrists. Despite the widespread use of the OMS-HC, its latent factor structure has only been examined in three countries [19][20][21]. Moreover, only two research groups have performed CFA on the scale items (see Table 1), and none of them has investigated its structure further to higher-order solutions.…”

“…This version displayed a good construct validity and satisfactory internal consistencies (α = 0.67 to 0.79) [ 19 ]. Later-on, the psychometric properties of the scale has been tested in international studies, and it is a reliable and valid scale in Singapore [ 20 ], Italy [ 21 ], and Chile [ 22 ] on various populations of healthcare providers. The Singaporean research group applied a slight modification on the factor structure and proposed a 14-item version by excluding one item of the attitude subscale due to its poor factor loading.…”

Instruments to assess mental health‐related stigma among health professionals and students in health sciences: A systematic psychometric review

“…This instrument assesses dimensions of stigma which have not been examined carefully to the present, such as emotional reactions, lack of social responsibility, empathy, or compassion towards people with mental illness (Link et al., ). This instrument was assessed in four studies (Destrebecq et al., ; Kassam, Papish, Modgill, & Patten, ; Modgill, Patten, Knaak, Kassam, & Szeto, ; Van der Maas et al., ).…”

“…Most of the validation studies of measurement instruments of associative stigma have been carried out on student samples (Chiles et al., ; Destrebecq et al., ; Kennedy et al., ; Wilkins & Abell, ). The detection of mental health‐related stigma during the training stage helps to ensure that future professionals improve the quality of care for people with a mental disorder.…”