The effects of stigma-reduction interventions related to mental disorders on implicit and explicit measures

Stigmatizing attitudes towards people with mental disorders can be seen in many cultures and in the wider community, including healthcare professionals. Many negative consequences of mental disorder stigmatization have been reported about individuals and their families. Therefore, it is important to evaluate the results of techniques used to combat stigma. Better and real results can be obtained when making this assessment with explicit and implicit measurements. It is observed that there is no implicit attitude analysis in stigmatization in our country. This study will be the first in the literature in terms of implicitly evaluating stigma towards mental disorders. In the first study, Sociology and Psychology students' attitudes towards mental illnesses were evaluated with explicit and implicit measurements. Findings showed that Psychology students had less stigmatizing attitudes towards mental disorders in implicit and explicit measurements than Sociology students. In the second study, the participants were assigned to a selection of training, contact, training+contact, training+empathy, and control 1 (communication training) and control 2 (no operations) groups. After the interventions, there was a decrease in explicit measurement stigmatization attitudes in the education group compared to the contact and control groups, and the most effective effect was in the condition of education with empathy. At the end of the experiment, there was no difference between the groups in terms of implicit measurement values.