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Evaluation ViewAttendees 2

Vulnerable Populations
Symposia

Symposium 82 - Engaging Varied Stakeholders to Disrupt Stigma as a Barrier to Care Across Mental Health Conditions

Saturday, November 16, 2024
12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EST
Location: Grand Ballroom I/J, Level 5, Downtown Marriott
CE: 1.5

Keywords: Stigma, Common Factors, Vulnerable Populations
Level of Familiarity: Basic to moderate
Recommended Readings: Hazell, C. M., Berry, C., Bogen-Johnston, L., & Banerjee, M. (2022). Creating a hierarchy of mental health stigma: testing the effect of psychiatric diagnosis on stigma. BJPsych open, 8(5), e174. https://doi.org/10.1192/bjo.2022.578,  

Clement, S., Schauman, O., Graham, T., Maggioni, F., Evans-Lacko, S., Bezborodovs, N., ... & Thornicroft, G. (2015). What is the impact of mental health-related stigma on help- seeking? A systematic review of quantitative and qualitative studies. Psychological medicine, 45(1), 11-27. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291714000129

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Mak, W. W., Poon, C. Y., Pun, L. Y., & Cheung, S. F. (2007). Meta-analysis of stigma and mental health. Social science & medicine, 65(2), 245-261. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2007.03.015

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Social stigmatization of various mental disorders and conditions has well-established negative associations with overall mental health (Mak et al., 2007). Specifically, social stigmatization is known to interfere with help-seeking behaviors (Clement et al., 2015) and increase feelings of shame (Yakeley, 2018). The impact of social stigma is especially concerning since rates of mental illness are steadily increasing, with current estimates suggesting that one in five adults and youth have some form of mental illness, and one in 25 adults have a serious mental illness (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2023). Research comparing various mental health diagnoses reflects differential stigma such that schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder are highly stigmatized while depression, anxiety, and obsessive-compulsive disorder are generally accepted (Robinson et al., 2018; Hazell, 2022). Furthermore, the root of social stigmatization seems varied such that multiple factors (e.g., fear, perception of control, social undesirability) contribute to the development of stigma across conditions and disorders (Hazell, 2022; Krendl & Freedman, 2019). Despite a growing body of research examining the impact of stigma across mental health disorders, diagnoses such as autism, conduct disorder, and eating disorders have heretofore received relatively little consideration despite findings reflecting stigma across these diagnoses (Frick & Meyers, 2017; Puhl & Suh, 2015; Turnock et al., 2022). Amidst a growing mental health crisis, the need to understand and disrupt the deleterious role of social stigma across various mental health diagnoses cannot be understated.
Consistent with this year’s convention theme, “Inspiring Community Engagement, Advocacy, and Innovation to Advance CBT,” this symposium will offer insights into the prevalence of stigma across different mental health diagnoses, as well as highlight intervention points at which to disrupt stigma in family members, clinicians, and the public more broadly. This symposium will focus on stigma as a barrier to care across diagnoses, thus highlighting a historically underexplored area that dissuades stakeholders from accessing CBT and other services. The first presentation will discuss how parents’ knowledge and stigma around autism affect their access to services in ethnoracial minority groups (Mary Isaac Cargill, MA). The second presentation will examine the efficacy of a treatment program for youth with conduct disorder and callous-unemotional traits to provide evidence against stigmatizing beliefs held by parents, teachers, and mental health professionals that these traits are intractable (Pevitr Bansal, PhD). The third presentation will compare public stigmatization across various mental health conditions to disrupt the binary conceptualization of stigma and provide evidence for which diagnoses are in most need of efforts to disrupt stigma (Bennett Reisinger, BPsych). The discussant (Maggi Price, PhD), an expert in stigma and resultant mental health inequities, will provide integrative insight from these studies to highlight the role that social stigmatization plays in disrupting care and community to inform and improve mental health care.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, the learner will be able to:
  1. Illustrate that social stigmatization is a relevant barrier to care across many mental health conditions and disorders.
  2. Present evidence of which conditions and disorders are most in need of efforts to reduce stigma to increase care access and improve quality of life.
  3. Integrate findings across mental health diagnoses and age groups to support vulnerable populations.
  4. Understand the role of multiple parties, including parents, educators, and mental health providers, in perpetuating or disrupting stigma.
  5. Plan to disseminate information to disrupt stigma within their communities and engage stakeholders in these efforts.

Presentations:

  • 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EST
    (SYM 82) Factors Predicting Access to Autism Services Among Ethnoracial Minority Families – the Impact of Autism Stigma and Knowledge

    Speaker: Mary Isaac Cargill, M.A. (she/her/hers) – Montclair State University

    Co-author: Sadaf Khawar, M.A. (she/her/hers) – Montclair State University

    Co-author: Erin Kang, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – Montclair State University

  • 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EST
    (SYM 82) Combatting the “untreatable” Hypothesis: Treatment Efficacy of Behavioral Therapy for Youth with Conduct Problems and Callous-unemotional Traits

    Speaker: Pevitr Bansal, Ph.D. (he/him/his) – Montclair State University

    Co-author: Daniel A. Waschbusch, Ph.D. – Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center

  • 12:30 PM – 2:00 PM EST
    (SYM 82) A Multifaceted Comparative Exploration of Public Stigma Across Various Psychological Disorders

    Speaker: Bennett A. A. Reisinger, Other (he/him/his) – University of South Australia

    Co-author: Bennett A. A. Reisinger, Other (he/him/his) – University of South Australia

    Co-author: Charlotte Flatman, BPsych (Hons) (she/her/hers) – University of South Australia

    Co-author: Carlye Aird, BPsych (Hons) (she/her/hers) – University of South Australia

    Co-author: Stephanie Webb, PhD (she/her/hers) – University of South Australia

    Co-author: David Gleaves, PhD (he/him/his) – University of South Australia