Campaign appears to influence subjective experience of stigma

Abstract

Background and aim. 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.

Method. 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.

Results. 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.

Conclusions. 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.

Keywords:

• Stigma
• time for change
• survey
• service users
• social contact

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the people who kindly responded to the postal questionnaire and acknowledge the contributions of many individuals, paid and unpaid, to the anti-stigma campaign evaluated here. In particular, Adele Cresswell managed the implementation of the anti-stigma strategy. Clair Chilvers led the strategy group and Julie Grant directed the Communications Department; both also commented constructively on a draft of this paper. Jonathan Wright and Mike Osborne led key aspects of the anti-stigma campaign, while Rosemary Renouf and Pam Abbott co-ordinated the 2009 Mental Health Awareness Weeks in Nottingham. We also acknowledge the constructive contributions of the reviewers of the paper.