Results support the hypothesis that young people's attitudes about schizophrenia are susceptible to change. Antistigma projects at school level could thus be a promising approach to improving public attitudes and to preventing stereotypes from becoming reinforced.

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It has to be taken into consideration that documentaries about mental illness do not automatically reduce stigma, and that these kind of activities will mainly attract people who are already sensitised for this topic.

In our society people with mental illness are still stigmatised and exposed to various forms of discrimination. Individual and structural discrimination and discrimination due to self-stigmatisation can be distinguished. The association "Irrsinnig Menschlich" ("Madly human") in Leipzig will serve as a model to present approaches to reduce these different kinds of discrimination of mentally ill people. The school project "Crazy? So what!" and the film festival "Ausnahmezustand" ("state of emergency"), carried out all over Germany in 2006, will be described in more detail. The first evaluation of both projects showed a reduction of stigmatisation to be possible. Students participating in the project tended to decrease their social distance to the mentally ill. These developments were not present with the control groups. Although the majority of the audience at the film festival either knew somebody who is mentally ill or were themselves suffering from a mental illness, the results showed that watching these documentaries can result in a reduction of social distance towards mentally ill people. Only long-term efforts can make anti-stigma campaigns successful and effective. Irrsinnig Menschlich has established the framework for this.

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