Portrayals of mental illness, treatment, and relapse and their effects on the stigma of mental illness: Population-based, randomized survey experiment in rural Uganda.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Mental illness stigma is a fundamental barrier to improving mental health worldwide, but little is known about how to durably reduce it. Understanding of mental illness as a treatable medical condition may influence stigmatizing beliefs, but available evidence to inform this hypothesis has been derived solely from high-income countries. We embedded a randomized survey experiment within a whole-population cohort study in rural southwestern Uganda to assess the extent to which portrayals of mental illness treatment effectiveness influence personal beliefs and perceived norms about mental illness and about persons with mental illness.

Methods and findings

Study participants were randomly assigned to receive a vignette describing a typical woman (control condition) or

SUBMITTER: Rasmussen JD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6754129 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature