The miseducation of mental health programming: The impact on stigma and beliefs about suicide.

Abstract

We explored the relationship between mental illness stigma and suicide beliefs in university students who have and have not completed a mental health education program. Our findings indicate university students generally hold relatively low levels of mental illness stigma except for stigma about dangerousness. Those who completed a mental health education program had lower scores on public stigma indices compared to those who had not. Stigma about the dangerousness of those with mental illness was predictive of what someone believes about suicide whether or not they completed a mental health education program. This study emphasizes stigmatized beliefs about perceptions of dangerousness are persistent and strongly tied to beliefs about suicide. We call for educational programs to be more focused on challenging the stigma about dangerousness and to work to decouple mental illness stigma from beliefs about suicide.