Department of Psychiatry, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Department of Psychology, Ryerson University, Toronto, ON, Canada.
Ethn Health. 2022 Jan;27(1):100-118. doi: 10.1080/13557858.2019.1640350. Epub 2019 Jul 24.
Stigma of mental illness contributes to silence, denial and delayed help seeking. Existing stigma reduction strategies seldom consider gender and cultural contexts.
The Strengths in Unity study was a multi-site Canadian study that engaged Asian men in three stigma reduction interventions (ACT, CEE, psychoeducation) and mobilized them as Community Mental Health Ambassadors. Our participants included both men living with or affected by mental illness (LWA) as well as community leaders (CL). This paper will: (1) describe the baseline characteristics of the Toronto participants including their sociodemographic information, mental illness stigma (CAMI and ISMI), attitudes towards social change (SJS), and intervention-related process variables (AAQ-II, VLQ, FMI, Empowerment); (2) compare the differences among these variables between LWA and CL; and (3) explore factors that may correlate with socio-economic status and mental health stigma.
A total of 609 Asian men were recruited in Toronto, Canada. Both CL and LWA had similar scores on measures of external and internalized stigma and social change attitudes, except that LWA had more positive views about the acceptance and integration of those with mental illness into the community on the CAMI, while CL had a higher level of perceived behavioral control on the SJS. Group differences were also observed between LWA and CL in some process-related variables. Exploratory analysis suggests that younger and more educated participants had lower stigma.
Our findings underscore the importance of engaging both community leaders and people with lived experience as mental health advocates to address stigma.
精神疾病污名导致人们保持沉默、否认和延迟寻求帮助。现有的减少污名化策略很少考虑到性别和文化背景。
“团结的力量”研究是一项多地点的加拿大研究，该研究让亚裔男性参与了三项减少污名化干预措施（行动、文化意识提升、心理教育），并动员他们成为社区心理健康大使。我们的参与者包括受精神疾病影响或患有精神疾病的男性（LWA）以及社区领袖（CL）。本文将：（1）描述多伦多参与者的基线特征，包括他们的社会人口统计学信息、精神疾病污名（CAMI 和 ISMI）、对社会变革的态度（SJS）以及与干预相关的过程变量（AAQ-II、VLQ、FMI、赋权）；（2）比较 LWA 和 CL 之间这些变量的差异；（3）探讨可能与社会经济地位和精神疾病污名相关的因素。
在加拿大多伦多共招募了 609 名亚裔男性。CL 和 LWA 在外部和内部污名以及社会变革态度的衡量标准上得分相似，除了 LWA 在 CAMI 上对将精神疾病患者纳入社区的接受和融合有更积极的看法，而 CL 在 SJS 上对感知行为控制的水平更高。LWA 和 CL 在一些与过程相关的变量上也存在组间差异。探索性分析表明，年龄较小和受教育程度较高的参与者污名程度较低。
我们的发现强调了让社区领袖和有生活经验的人作为心理健康倡导者参与解决污名问题的重要性。
