At a glance
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A School-Based Intervention to Reduce Stigma & Promote Mental-Health Service Use
In Brief
A clinical study evaluating Curriculum, Contact, and 1 other intervention for Stigma, Social and Mental Illness. Completed, enrolled 751 participants.
Detailed Summary
This is a school-based field experiment conducted in sixth grade classrooms to evaluate a multifaceted intervention designed to change attitudes and behaviors regarding mental illnesses. The research tests hypotheses as to whether alone or in combination interventions that are 1) a curriculum-based in-class presentations, 2) contact-based with a person who has experienced a mental illness, or 3) or based on educational materials distributed in classes improve knowledge/attitudes and encourage help seeking for mental health problems in a follow up study lasting two years.
Study Details
Timeline
Interventions
The curriculum intervention is a three- module, three-hour curriculum delivered by teachers in sixth grade classrooms over a three- to six-day period. The curriculum is designed to increase knowledge and improve attitudes about mental illnesses so as to improve the school climate with respect to mental illness stigma and encourage help seeking for youth in need.
The contact intervention involves two college students-a 27-year-old male with a history of bipolar I disorder and a 24-year-old female with a history of bipolar II disorder-who each make a ten-minute in-class presentation (20 minutes total) describing onset and course of their symptoms, hospitalizations and treatments, their feelings about the illness, coping strategies, and impact of the illness on social relationships and functioning at school and work.
The materials intervention is implemented by teachers who prominently display posters in the classroom for two weeks and provide students with bookmarks. The materials focus on individuals' with mental illnesses emphasizing their personal traits and abilities as opposed to language that labels a person as "mentally ill."