School of Sociology & Social Policy, University of Nottingham, Nottingham, UK.
J Ment Health. 2011 Feb;20(1):89-97. doi: 10.3109/09638237.2010.537403.
An English mental health trust implemented a strategy to dispel the stigma surrounding mental illness and service users. The purpose of this study was to evaluate its impact.
A questionnaire was mailed to 600 service users, selected at random, to evaluate the campaign's impact. Factor analysis of 243 responses yielded three factors which could be interpreted in relation to service users' perceptions of: public attitudes towards mental illness, service users' relationships with staff and other inter-personal relationships.
Significant improvement was found in service users' perceptions of public attitudes towards mental illness. This can cautiously be related to the main thrust of the campaign. No change was found in the other two factors, which supports the inference that the campaign specifically influenced users' experience of public portrayals of mental illness.
This study indicates that certain aspects of stigma may be amenable to change through a targeted campaign. While users' experience of public attitudes may be improved, at least in the short-term, other aspects of stigma did not appear to be amenable to change through community-level interventions. Different dimensions of stigma seem to demand different approaches. The intra-psychic roots of stigma may be the hardest elements to change.
一家英国心理健康信托机构实施了一项旨在消除公众对精神疾病和服务使用者污名化的策略。本研究旨在评估其效果。
向 600 名随机挑选的服务使用者邮寄问卷，以评估该活动的影响。对 243 份回复进行因子分析，得出三个因素，可以根据服务使用者对以下方面的看法进行解释：公众对精神疾病的态度、服务使用者与工作人员的关系以及其他人际关系。
服务使用者对公众对精神疾病态度的看法有显著改善。这可以谨慎地与运动的主旨联系起来。另外两个因素没有变化，这支持了这样的推断，即该运动专门影响了用户对精神疾病的公众描述的体验。
本研究表明，通过有针对性的运动，某些方面的污名可能会发生变化。虽然用户对公众态度的体验可能会得到改善，但至少在短期内，污名的其他方面似乎不会因社区层面的干预而发生变化。污名的不同维度似乎需要不同的方法。污名的内在根源可能是最难改变的因素。
