Reducing stigma using videos
Publication & project summaries
Reducing public stigma towards psychosis using contact-based brief videos
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Amplify OnTrackNY publication summaries summarize peer-reviewed publications focused on quality improvement or research conducted to help us learn & improve the program.
Study snapshot
The study aimed to explore whether brief video interventions reduce public stigma towards individuals with psychosis.1
Background
More than two-thirds of people with psychosis worldwide receive no mental health care, at least in part because of stigma embedded in systemic or structural discrimination. Public stigma is a barrier to care and increases the duration of untreated psychosis among individuals with first- episode psychosis.
What did we do?
Using a crowdsourcing platform (Amazon Mechanical Turk), we recruited and assigned 1,055 participants ages 18–30 years to a brief video-based intervention, a written vignette intervention containing the same material, or to a nonintervention control condition. We assessed public stigma at baseline, postintervention, and at 30-day follow up.
Figure 1: Study participants (N=1,055)
This study is based on 1,055 participants ages 18-30 years old.
In the 90-second video, a 22-year-old African American woman with schizophrenia humanized the illness through her emotional description of living a meaningful and productive life.
What did we find?
As hypothesized, this emotional video-based intervention had significantly greater potency than the vignette and control conditions in reducing stigma across all domains at the postintervention assessment.
Figure 2: Mean stigma scores over time
What is next?
Presenting person-focused stories/videos on the new OnTrackNY home page.
References
1. Amsalem D, Markowitz JC, Jankowski SE, Yang LH, Valeri L, Lieff SA, Neria Y, Dixon LB. Sustained effect of a brief video in reducing public stigma toward individuals with psychosis: a randomized controlled trial of young adults. American Journal of Psychiatry. 2021 Jul;178(7):635-42.
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