Implicit Stigma Recognition and Management for Health Professionals

Stigma against individuals with mental illness has disastrous consequences for patient outcomes. Better approaches to reducing stigma in health care professionals are required. Implicit stigma education is an emerging area of research that may inform the design and implementation of stigma reduction programs. In this "in brief report," the authors describe the evaluation of a novel implicit stigma reduction workshop for health professionals.

The authors conducted a realist evaluation using a longitudinal multiple case study approach. Once a conceptual model was established, three case studies were conducted on physicians and nurses (n = 69) at an academic health sciences center. Within each case, pre- and post-attitudinal scales and qualitative data from semi-structured interviews were used. Consistent with realist evaluation principles, context-mechanism-outcome configuration patterns were analyzed.

An implicit stigma recognition and management workshop produced statistically significant changes in participant attitudes in two out of three contexts. The qualitative evaluation described the perceptions of sustainable changes in perspective and practice. The degree to which individual participants learned with and worked among inter-professional teams influenced outcomes.

Implicit stigma recognition and management is a useful educational strategy for reducing stigma among health professionals. Once stigma is recognized, curricular interventions may promote behavioral change by encouraging explicit alternative behaviors that are sustained through social reinforcement within inter-professional teams.