Reducing Mental Illness Stigma through Unconscious Bias-Informed Education

This article was migrated. The article was not marked as recommended. Mental illness stigma can have disastrous consequences for patients, families and healthcare organizations. Unconscious bias informed education seeks a systematic approach to addressing implicit biases in healthcare providers by promoting awareness and understanding in order to promote compassion and empathy. After a 1 hour intervention, third year medical students who were enrolled in the third year psychiatry clerkship rotation completed a demographic form, (pre/post) a shortened mental illness implicit association test (IAT) and the Brief Mental Illness Attitudes Scale (BMIAS). For the IAT, the majority (51.4%) of participants demonstrated a bias that mental illness was associated with dangerousness. A paired samples t test of BMIAS scores found no significant change in pre and post scores on Responsibility subscale. There was a statistically significant improvement in the in the Traits subscale from pre (n=87, m=5.15, sd=0.87) and post (n=87, m=5.62, sd=0.71), t(86)=5.16 p<0.001. Our brief seminar had a statistically significant impact on student attitudes towards patients with traits of individuals with psychiatric illness. These findings indicate that mental illness stigma is an important issue in medical education and that unconscious bias-informed education may provide an effective method to reduce stigma.