Who Comes Out With Their Mental Illness and How Does It Help?

Coming out with mental illness may be an effective strategy for reducing self-stigma. This study examined predictors and consequences of coming out. Participants (N = 106) with severe mental illness who reported being out (n = 79) or not out (n = 27) endorsed benefits of being out (BBOs) and reasons for staying in.

Diminishing the self-stigma of mental illness by coming out proud.

This randomized controlled trial examined the impact of the Coming Out Proud (COP) program on self-stigma, stigma stress, and depression. Research participants who experienced mental health challenges were randomly assigned to a three session COP program (n=51) or a waitlist control (n=75). Outcome measures that assessed the progressively harmful stages of self-stigma, stigma stress appraisals, and depression were administered at pre-test, post-test, and one-month follow-up.

Do the effects of antistigma programs persist over time? Findings from a meta-analysis.

Objectives: A previous analysis showed the positive impact of education and contact with persons with lived experience on public stigma toward mental illness, with contact yielding significantly greater effect sizes than education. This study reported a further analysis of those data that examined effects of education and contact at follow-up.

Methods: The literature (before October 2010) was searched and coded for studies that examined strategies for changing public stigma.

The California Assessment of Stigma Change: A Short Battery to Measure Improvements in the Public Stigma of Mental Illness.

Contact-based anti-stigma programs delivered by people with lived experience yields stigma change. This study examined psychometrics and sensitivity of the California Assessment of Stigma Change (CASC). CASC assesses prejudicial beliefs, affirming attitudes, and willingness to seek mental healthcare.

Peer navigators and integrated care to address ethnic health disparities of people with serious mental illness.

People of color with serious mental illnesses experience high rates of morbidity and mortality. Patient navigators, developed for cancer care, may help this group benefit from integrated care. This review examined patient navigators' key ingredients for cancer care for relevance to patients of color for application of peer services to psychiatric goals.

Key ingredients to contact-based stigma change: a cross-validation.

Objective: Contact-based antistigma programs seemingly have a larger and more sustained impact than educational strategies. Previous qualitative research of advocates with lived experiences yielded 32 key ingredients of contact-based programs comprising 5 categories. This study sought an independent sample's feedback of the 32 ingredients.

Brief battery for measurement of stigmatizing versus affirming attitudes about mental illness.

Decreasing the stigma of mental illness is not sufficient. Rather promoting important ideas, such as recovery, empowerment, and self-determination, is important to increase social inclusion, or more broadly, affirming attitudes. The goal of this article is to evaluate the psychometrics of a battery of measures that assess both stigmatizing and affirming attitudes toward people with mental illnesses.

The California schedule of key ingredients for contact-based antistigma programs.

Objective: A major public health priority has been to eliminate stigma's egregious effects on life opportunities for people with mental illnesses. Research shows contact-based antistigma programs are among the most effective. Such findings call for clarity to define the components of consumer-directed antistigma programs.

Changing stigma through a consumer-based stigma reduction program.

This study assessed the Anti-Stigma Project workshop, a contact/education intervention developed by On Our Own of Maryland, Inc. and the Maryland Mental Hygiene Administration. Two separate randomized controlled trials administered pre- and post-test questionnaire assessments.

The effects of news stories on the stigma of mental illness.

The media are often identified as partially responsible for increasing the stigma of mental illness through their negatively focused representations. For many years, training programs have educated journalists on how to report on mental illness to reduce stigma. This purpose of this study was to evaluate the benefits of reading a positive, neutral or a negative journalism article that discusses mental illness.

Measuring mental illness stigma with diminished social desirability effects.

Background: For persons with mental illness, stigma diminishes employment and independent living opportunities as well as participation in psychiatric care. Public stigma interventions have sought to ameliorate these consequences.

Aims: Evaluation of anti-stigma programs' impact is typically accomplished with self-report questionnaires.

Challenging the public stigma of mental illness: a meta-analysis of outcome studies.

Objective: Public stigma and discrimination have pernicious effects on the lives of people with serious mental illnesses. Given a plethora of research on changing the stigma of mental illness, this article reports on a meta-analysis that examined the effects of antistigma approaches that included protest or social activism, education of the public, and contact with persons with mental illness.

Methods: The investigators heeded published guidelines for systematic literature reviews in health care.

Self-stigma of mental illness scale--short form: reliability and validity.

The internalization of public stigma by persons with serious mental illnesses may lead to self-stigma, which harms self-esteem, self-efficacy, and empowerment. Previous research has evaluated a hierarchical model that distinguishes among stereotype awareness, agreement, application to self, and harm to self with the 40-item Self-Stigma of Mental Illness Scale (SSMIS). This study addressed SSMIS critiques (too long, contains offensive items that discourages test completion) by strategically omitting half of the original scale's items.

Changing heat-related mortality in the United States.

Heat is the primary weather-related cause of death in the United States. Increasing heat and humidity, at least partially related to anthropogenic climate change, suggest that a long-term increase in heat-related mortality could occur. We calculated the annual excess mortality on days when apparent temperatures--an index that combines air temperature and humidity--exceeded a threshold value for 28 major metropolitan areas in the United States from 1964 through 1998.

Decadal changes in summer mortality in U.S. cities.

Recent studies suggest that anthropogenic climate warming will result in higher heat-related mortality rates in U.S. cities than have been observed in the past.