Effectiveness of social contact and educational intervention on reducing mental health stigma in university students

The intervention consists of a one-hour workshop led by an OBERTAMENT activist (“OBERTAMENT Webpage-Activists”). These activists are people with a mental illness who have received a nine training sessions with a social worker to improve their communication skills and empowerment.
First, the activists briefly describes the OBERTAMENT project and its objectives and students are invited to participate in a dynamic group conversation to estimate and discuss the high prevalence of mental health problems. The key message is: "According to the WHO, one in four people will have a mental health disorder during life”. Next, the activists offer a lecture focused on mental health, mental health problems diagnoses, stigma, discrimination and social exclusion. The OBERTAMENT advertisements that had been used during the 2012 social-marketing campaign are used as a didactical tool. Following this, activists give a first person account of how they coped with mental ill-health and describe how discrimination had affected them throughout their life. Students are invited to ask the activists questions and they are provided with information on family support organizations. Finally, conclusions from students are shared and the activists conclude the workshop with a motivational reflection: “having a positive attitude to people with mental your future professional work".
The control group is a wait list group of students; the only difference between groups is the timing of the contact and education workshop. Students in the control group classes will receive the intervention after the last follow-up evaluation.

2014-02-02

2014-05-29

Intended behaviour, Personal and perceived stigma and Attitudes

Students will be clustered in classes and assessed in three evaluations: baseline (before the intervention), postintervention (15 days later), and follow-up (3 months after the intervention). Data will be collected in the classrooms through a paper and pencil self-reported questionnaire.

Cluster randomization by coin flip.

Clusters in university classes.

Yes

8 classes

200 students

4 classes in intervention and 54 classes in control

The aim of this study was to evaluate the impact of a social contact and education intervention to improve attitudes to mental illness in first-year social work students. This was a 3-month cluster randomized controlled trial with two parallel arms: intervention (87) and control group (79). The intervention was a workshop led by an OBERTAMENT activist (a person with a mental illness trained in communication skills and empowerment by a social worker). We assessed intended future behavior toward people with mental illness, personal and perceived stigma, and mental health–related attitudes (self-reported questionnaire). The intervention improved social work students’ attitudes (d ≈ 0.50, p < .05) and reduced personal stigma toward people with mental illness (d = 0.35, p = .04) as well as improving their future intended behavior 2 weeks after the intervention (d = 0.51, p = .01). The intervention impact on authoritarian attitudes toward people with schizophrenia was maintained after 3 months (d = 0.94, p = .01). Long-term impact needs to be improved.

Rubio-Valera M, Aznar-Lou I, Vives-Collet M, Fernández A, Gil-Girbau M, Serrano-Blanco A. Reducing the Mental Health-Related Stigma of Social Work Students: A Cluster RCT. Research on Social Work Practice. Apr 2016.

http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/1049731516641492#articleCitationDownloadContainer