Improving psychology students’ attitudes toward people with schizophrenia: A quasi-randomized controlled study.

Abstract

Despite scientific evidence that the majority of People With Schizophrenia (PWS) have personal histories of traumatic life events and adversities, their needs for psychological support often remain unmet. Poor availability of non-pharmacological therapies in schizophrenia may be partly due to professionals' attitudes toward people diagnosed with this disorder. As future health professionals, psychology students represent a target population for efforts to increase the probability that PWS will be offered effective psychological therapies. This quasirandomized controlled study investigated the effect of an educational intervention, addressing common prejudices via scientific evidence and pre-recorded audio-testimony from PWS, on the attitudes of psychology students towards PWS. Students in their fifth year of a master's degree in Psychology at the Second University of Naples, Italy were randomly assigned to an experimental group -which attended two three-hour sessions a week apart --or to a control group. Compared to their baseline assessment, at one-month reassessment, the 76 educated students endorsed more psychosocial causes and more of them recommended psychologists in the treatment of schizophrenia. They were also more optimistic about recovery, less convinced that PWS are recognizable and unpredictable and more convinced that treatments, pharmacological and psychological, are useful. No significant changes were found, from baseline to one-month reassessment, in the 112 controls. At one-month reassessment, educated students were more optimistic about recovery and less convinced that PWS are unpredictable than controls. These findings suggest that psychology students' attitudes toward PWS can be improved by training initiatives including education and indirect contact with users.

The Opinions of Italian Psychology Students About People Diagnosed with Depression and Schizophrenia: A Comparative Study

“…In the schizophrenia group, 5 th year students resulted more pessimistic about recovery, and perceived these people as more dangerous to others, compared to 1 st year students. This result confirms previous findings on the association of schizophrenia label with prognostic pessimism, and stresses the need to provide students with education on recovery and stigma in schizophrenia, including evidence-based education about the actual rates of violence in this group (30,49,50). Conversely, it is encouraging that 5 th year students perceive people with depression as less unpredictable than 1 st year students.…”

A multicentric study on stigma towards people with mental illness in health sciences students

“…They need to hear real testimonies of individuals who have recovered and, even more so, these testimonies should come from doctors or other health professionals. Secondly, we agree with Magliano et al [ 35 ] about the need for revision of the psychiatric curricula for medical and nursing students and the need to pay greater attention to the integration of psychological and medical aspects in clinical management, education on clinical efficacy of psychosocial interventions, and the sensitisation of students regarding the stigma of mental illness as a public health issue. With this topic, we underline the recommendations of Dixon et al [ 36 ] who said that the presentation of autobiographical cases should allow mental illnesses to be viewed within the context of the individual’s entire life.…”

The beliefs of non‐psychiatric doctors about the causes, treatments, and prognosis of schizophrenia

“…Education and contact with people diagnosed with schizophrenia are both stated to have some impact in reducing public stigma and prejudice against people with serious mental health problems (Corrigan et al, 2012) and in health contexts (Henderson et al, 2014;Ucok et al, 2011). In Italy, educational initiatives for future health, based on participation of people with experience of the psychiatric system and who have been given a schizophrenia diagnosis (Magliano et al, 2014;Magliano et al, 2016), resulted in increased endorsement of psychosocial causes, more frequent recommendation of psychologists, greater prognostic optimism and increased conviction of the usefulness of both pharmacological and psychological treatments.…”