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Stigma in Healthcare? Exploring the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavioural Responses of Healthcare Professionals and Students toward Individuals with Mental Illnesses

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Abstract

Individuals with mental illnesses are often stigmatized by healthcare professionals and students, shaping the quality of care that such clients receive. This study examines the knowledge, attitudes, and behavioural responses of healthcare professionals and students toward individuals with mental illnesses. The seven-phase meta-ethnography was utilized to complete this study: getting started, deciding relevance, reading the studies, determining how the studies are related, translating the studies into one another, synthesizing translations, and expressing the synthesis. The meta-synthesis yielded five core themes. Two themes described insight into positive and negative perceptions and behaviours of healthcare professionals and students toward individuals with mental illnesses. Three themes addressed the factors, including insufficiencies in the healthcare system, contact experiences, and other biological and social influences, that impact the perceptions and behaviours. Understanding these humiliating perceptions and behaviours and the factors that shape them is the first step toward diminishing mental health stigma in the healthcare system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Children’s Autism Services of Edmonton, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Taylor Riffel

  2. Department of Occupational Therapy, Faculty of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Alberta, 2-30 Corbett Hall, Edmonton, AB, T6G2G4, Canada

    Shu-Ping Chen

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Contributions

This is part of T.R.’s Master’s thesis. Both authors have equal contributions to the study: conceptualization, T.R. and S.C.; methodology, S.C.; literature search, T. R.; data analysis, T.R. and S.C.; writing—original draft preparation, T.R.; writing—review and editing, S.C.; supervision, S.C.

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Correspondence to Shu-Ping Chen.

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Riffel, T., Chen, SP. Stigma in Healthcare? Exploring the Knowledge, Attitudes, and Behavioural Responses of Healthcare Professionals and Students toward Individuals with Mental Illnesses. Psychiatr Q 91, 1103–1119 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11126-020-09809-3

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