Abstract
Objective
If presented with serious mental illness (SMI), individuals’ low help-seeking behaviors and poor adherence to treatment are associated with negative stereotypes and attitudes of healthcare providers. In this study, we examined the effects of a brief psychoeducational program on reducing stigma in pre-clinical medical students.
Methods
One hundred and two pre-clinical medical students (20–23 years old) were randomly assigned to face-to-face contact + educational lecture (n = 51) condition or video-based contact + educational lecture (n = 51) condition. Measures of pre-clinical medical students’ mental illness-related stigma using the Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC) were administered at pre-, post-treatment, and 1-month follow-up.
Results
A 2 (condition: face-to-face contact + educational lecture, video-based contact + educational lecture) by 3 (time: pre-treatment, post-treatment, and 1-month follow-up) mixed model MANOVA was conducted on the Attitudes, Disclosure and Help-Seeking, and Social Distance OMS-HC subscales. Participants’ scores on all subscales changed significantly across time, regardless of conditions. To determine how participants’ scores changed significantly over time on each subscale, Bonferroni follow-up comparisons were performed to access pairwise differences for the main effect of time. Specifically, pairwise comparisons produced a significant reduction in Social Distance subscale between pre-treatment and post-treatment and between pre-treatment and 1-month follow-up, and a significant increase between post-treatment and 1-month follow-up, regardless of conditions. With respect to the Attitudes and Disclosure and Help-Seeking subscales, pairwise comparisons produced a significant reduction in scores between pre-treatment and post-treatment and a significant increase between post-treatment and 1-month follow-up.
Conclusions
Our findings provide additional evidence that educational lecture on mental illness, coupled with either face-to-face contact or video-based contact, is predictive of positive outcomes in anti-stigma programs targeting future healthcare providers.
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Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank Tuan Najwa Hanim Tuan Chik and Asma’ Huda Hatim for assisting with data collection.
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All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.
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No funding was obtained for this study.
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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.
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On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.
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Fernandez, A., Tan, KA., Knaak, S. et al. Effects of Brief Psychoeducational Program on Stigma in Malaysian Pre-clinical Medical Students: A Randomized Controlled Trial. Acad Psychiatry 40, 905–911 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-016-0592-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40596-016-0592-1