Influence of Education on Stigma and Mental Health - Lab Report Example

Report

Stigma is an adverse treatment towards someone based on false or lack of information about them. Stigma and mental illness go hand in hand. Remedies for mental health are affected by stigma. Many college students are short in mental health treatment due to a lack of information. Mental health stigma is negativity towards those experiencing mental illness. Mental health stigma is mostly felt in college students through rejection and prejudice due to different cultural backgrounds and beliefs. According to dr Groot’s stigma lectures, public stigma on mental health is the most dangerous form of stigma and a precursor to all other stigmas. A concept borrowed whose studies showed that cultural beliefs, emotions, and prejudice as forms of public stigma lead to social distancing and segregation of mentally ill people in colleges and public places.

Psychoeducation and contact education on stigma are some of the ways of reducing stigma. Effectively, public stigma can be reduced through education on mental illness and stigma. Here, the lab report tries to lay down the research and findings on mental illness and stigma. According to Koyskul el at (2016), Beliefs and myths about mental illness and public stigma should be a priority in university and college students' journey at the beginning. He believes that this will go a long way in changing the public's mindset on how to treat mental illness and public stigma.

Many patients of mental illness fail to get help due to public stigma, according to Elsenberg et al, (2009), who goes further to explain that even the society and community at large will be affected by this unless measures are put in place to break this chain. Contact education and psychoeducation on public stigma have been done to find ways to influence public stigma and mental health stigma to a more considerable extent. Our findings and borrowed findings from the other sources form the basis of this laboratory report.

According to Morgan et al, ( 2018), several research and studies have resulted in plans and ways to reduce public stigma. Psychoeducation and contact education on stigma are some of the practices of college and university students to understand, educate, and curb the public stigma menace. They led to information on public stigma and mental health, the contact information on the same by availing the information on videos and short films.

The aims and objectives of the research done by use and from various sources are to reduce public stigma rates and people who have a mental illness. Mitigation can be achieved in multiple ways, but the best practice has been highlighted for a long time through psychoeducation and contact education on stigma. Bharadwa et al, (2017) show that the results are excellent when college students are educated on public stigma and mental health. Their response becomes positive towards the other students suffering the fate of mental health. He also shows the rise and increases in the numbers of patients with mental health trying to reach out for help.

Studies done by Waal and Wood in 2009 show that psychoeducation information yielded far better results than Contact education. Here they exposed the participants to three tests before the experiments were conducted. The participants' information showed that they now responded positively towards fellow students who have a mental illness. The participants were taught and subjected to videos and short films on stigma and mental health topics.

Further studies on contact-based theories done by Koike et al, (2018) on separate groups showed significant improvement in post-education about stigma and mental health. Here they subjected the participants to watching social distance and contact short films compared to video games. They did this for several hours and sessions without doing a follow-up, and on checking the results, they concluded that contact education for more prolonged periods produced positive results.

Corrigan et al in 2006 did experiments to compare the two methods of reducing stigma; Psychoeducation and contact methods, where he exposed the participants to educative materials and videos on social contacts. He found out that based on test results and scores before and after experiments, The participants showed positive results towards the mentally ill patients. More research and studies are recommended.

Other researchers like kosyluk et al, ( 2016) did a study using videos and films on psychoeducation and contact using 198 participants. He found out that the mentality about public stigma on mental illness was changed positively once the 198 students were exposed to informative videos and films on the topic.

This laboratory report is written in line with previous research findings, which suggested that combining the two methods of psychoeducation and contact education yielded better results. Concerning this, we used four weeks of education on mental health and stigma to drive the points on psychoeducation and hearing voice programs of shared experiences based on contact-based teaching on stigma. Measures used were base on dangerous activities, behavior, and misinformation on mental health and stigma.

The report is based on the hypothesis that clinical psychology programs are the best ways of reducing public stigma on mental health. Our methods, findings, results, and discussions are well discussed in this report.

Methods

Participants

The total number of participants used in this study, and research on the influence on education on stigma through psychoeducation and contact education on stigma was 772. All the students of Melbourne university qualified for eligibility regardless of their age and gender. Eligibility and gender were of no concern because the study was to be soo real and natural.

Materials and measures

We used Videos and online questionnaires to study the participants. Social distance scale by Link et al, (1987) and rankings on how dangerous and what Penn et al do dangerous mental illness, 1994 are some of the measures we used to conduct our findings. We also used emotional response scales and exclusion and inclusion choices by the public on mental health individuals.

Procedure and design

We used a repetitive design measure by requesting the participants to complete short online questionnaires. Separate group means scores of two-time points were considered during this study. The mean scores of 1st time Pre-intervention for all participants before starting the clinical psychology program were compared with mean scores of 2nd-time post-intervention for all participants after completing the clinical psychology program.

Results

After the study and experiment, our findings and results were analyzed based on scales of social distance, dangerousness, and reactions. We obtained the means averages and calculated each plate's standard errors then compared the three rankings in a graph format. A social distance scale was also used to determine the dangerousness and reaction of the participants. The table below shows our findings.

Social Distance Scale

Clinical Psychology Program Response

Very willing

1

6

Slightly willing

2

4

Unwilling

3

5

The results in the table below show a random sample results comparison of the two timed tests one and test 2 for pre-clinical and post clinical programs for a social distance scale

Pre Intervention Before

Clinical Psychology Study

Post-intervention After

Clinical Psychology Study

10

8

21

17

13

12

20

19

27

16

37

20

32

43

Table II for social distance scale. The results in table two above were expressed in the graphs below.

Figure 1 shows the mean pre and post-intervention results for the social distance scale. From it can be seen that post-intervention scores are lower than pre-intervention scores. Hence, they imply that the mean and standard error deviations are lower after the clinical psychology study program.

The results in Table III below for mean pre and post score for the affirmative response scale, and its graph is shown below.

Pre Intervention Before

Clinical Psychology Study

Post-intervention After

Clinical Psychology Study

17

14

13

12

11

10

15

13

24

11

19

13

10

9

From the gram above, it clear that the post-intervention study is lower than the pre-intervention research showing that the mean and standard deviation error for post-study is lower than pre-study

The table IV and graph below is the mean score for pre and post-intervention study for Dangerous scale measures obtained during the study

Pre Intervention Before

Clinical Psychology Study

Post-intervention After

Clinical Psychology Study

18

13

19

11

23

20

36

29

40

26

18

17

17

16

The graph shows that scores for post-intervention studies are much lower than scores for pre-intervention studies. Here we can clearly say that the mean and standard deviations for pre-intervention reviews are also lower than those of pre-intervention studies.

Discussions

Our finding's main aim was to answer whether education had an influence on mental illness stigma after clinical programs conducted using online video questionnaires and shared heard information. It tends to support all the other hypotheses brought forward though ours deals with two psychoeducation techniques and contact education working for a hand at hand to get desirable results.

Previous studies of Wood et la,(2006) and Koike et al, (2018) only showed how results could be obtained using either contact or psychoeducation separately. Ours, on the other hand, showed a decrease in responses to Affirmative response, Social distancing, and Dangerous scales. It tries to agree with that of Kosyluk et al, (2016), but the only difference is unlike his hypothesis, which used only one educative video. Ours was a four-week curriculum that used numerous videos and online questionnaires.

Both are, however, effective. We found that desirable results were effectively obtained when both are used concurrently. Corrigan et al, (2006) show that stigma significantly reduced when information through education is given to college students. The setback was that public stigma on mental illness could not be decreased by psychoeducation or contact education. Our findings, just like other findings, have shown that this is not true.

Eisenberg et al, (2009) agree with all the other techniques that the influence of education can remove the public stigma. The only limitation we faced was because the study was not strictly monitored. Therefore the results may not be that accurate. Therefore in the future, if a review is to be done, monitoring should be put into consideration.

All in all, our findings should play a significant part in implementing it in other universities and colleges as it has proved to give substantial results.