Ethical Implications of Mental Health Stigma: Primary Health Care Providers’ Perspectives

Abstract

Stigma towards mental illness is a widespread phenomenon not just in the developing world, but also in developed countries. Unfortunately, this stigma is not only restricted to the general population, but is also prevalent among professional health care providers. Research from developing countries is scarce. Thus, the aim of this paper was to explore health care providers’ attitudes toward mental illness stigma in the primary health care settings. The review sheds light on the ethical implications of mental health stigma as perceived by primary health care providers, and the proposed recommendations for responsible conduct of research and policy initiative in the context of mental health research. Utilizing CINAHL, Medline and Scopus electronic data bases, results are reported for the 41 studies that are grouped according to being from USA, Europe, Australia, Africa, and Asia and Arab World. The results from this review confirmed that stigma associated with mental illness have many ethical implications in the context of research including use of consent form, fair treatment, and good respect for individual rights concerning treatment choices. To counter stigma and prevent the ethical implications of such stigma, interventions in the form of awareness and training programs would be the best way to minimize and stop it. Further, govermnetal and political are needed to initiate a national code of ethics for mental health research in their respective coutries.

Analyzing the relationship between the personality traits of nursing students and their attitudes toward people with mental illnesses

“…In our study, we are speculating that the results were similar because the majority of the students did not take the psychiatric nursing class. Health care providers, who did not receive sufficient education and had fewer interactions with people with mental illnesses, showed negative attitudes toward mental illnesses (Abuhammad & Dalky, 2019). In accordance with this, Mårtensson et al (2014) found out that nurses who have friends with mental illnesses had more positive attitudes.…”

“…Attitude is defined as a "relatively enduring and general evaluation of an object, person, group, issue, or concept on a dimension ranging from negative to positive" (American Psychological Association [APA], n.d.a). Health workers' attitudes toward people with mental illnesses are similar to those of the general public (Abuhammad & Dalky, 2019;Tungchama et al, 2019). Therefore, health workers' attitudes and behaviors toward people with mental illnesses are reflected in the healthcare service they provide.…”

“…Mental illnesses are one of the common health problems in society (Brown & Wolf, 2018). Mental illnesses are among the most labeled/stigmatized in the world (Abuhammad & Dalky, 2019). People with mental illnesses are usually marginalized in society, although it differs based on the country (Dardas & Simmons, 2015; Dev et al, 2017).…”

The ethical, social, and cultural dimensions of screening for mental health in children and adolescents of the developing world

“…Screening for MNSDs in developing world youth is justified by the large and growing vulnerable population of C&A in LMICs, the high prevalence of untreated or badly treated MNSDs in this cohort [26], the unjust stigmatization and cruel treatment of individuals suffering from these disorders [27][28][29], and the existence and availability of promising treatments for MNSDs [30,31]. Screening procedures are overwhelmingly recognized as some of the most cost-effective preventive population-wide public health strategies for reducing societal burden and costs related to disease and disability [32][33][34][35].…”