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Anti-stigma films and medical students’ attitudes towards mental illness and psychiatry: randomised controlled trial

University of Nottingham Medical School

Tim Calton, Lecturer in Psychiatry

^*Division of Psychiatry, University of Nottingham, Nottingham NG3 5AA, email: tim.calton{at}nottingham.ac.uk

Ben Dimambro, Lecturer in Psychiatry

University of Nottingham

Caroline Flood, Specialist Registrar

Nottinghamshire Healthcare NHS Trust, Nottingham

Cristine Glazebrook

Department of Behavioural Sciences, University of Nottingham

Declaration of interest

T.C. appeared in the film A Human Experience. He has no substantive relationship with, and received no financial remuneration from, Rethink for participating in the film. Although T.C. devised and designed the study, he only participated in data collection at time points 1 and 2 for the control group and was not involved in data analysis.

AIMS AND METHOD

To explore the feasibility of a randomised controlled trial of the effects of two anti-stigma films on medical students’ attitudes to serious mental illness and psychiatry. Attitudes to serious mental illness, perceived dangerousness, social distance and psychiatry, were measured before and after watching the films and at 8 weeks.

RESULTS

Intervention films significantly improved general attitudes to serious mental illness and social distance, with a trend towards reducing perceived dangerousness. These effects appeared to attenuate during the students’ clinical placements, suggesting a possible interaction with their clinical experiences.

CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS

Our results suggest both that it may be possible to conduct a substantive trial of the effects of the intervention films on a larger cohort of medical students and that the films may be effective in reducing stigmatising attitudes in medical students.