Evaluation of a Pilot Intervention to Reduce Mental Health and Addiction Stigma in Primary Care Settings

Healthcare environments are not exempt from the impact of stigma against mental illness and addiction, which contributes to barriers to client access and appropriate treatment. To address this concern, healthcare organizations have a growing interest in mental illness and addiction anti-stigma anti-discrimination programming as part of their staff-wide professional development. Though standard interventions demonstrate effectiveness in the short and mid-term, the evidence for long-term change is inconclusive. A flexible, innovative intervention was developed in collaboration with community health care centres to reduce mental illness and addiction stigma and discrimination at an organizational level. A mixed methods approach was utilized to develop the intervention design and evaluate the effectiveness of the intervention. 137 people participated in the survey component of the study and five senior management staff in interviews. Quantitative results showed that the intervention was effective in changing attitudes toward mental illness (e.g. 5,9% improvement in OMS-HC score, p < 0,05) and substance use problems (e.g. 8.4% reduction in social distance for heroin dependence, p < 0.05). Qualitative findings were positive for indicators of observed improvement in mental health knowledge and behaviour. The implications for future research that allows for the further evaluation of multicomponent anti-stigma interventions in healthcare settings are discussed.