Incorporating Anti-Stigma Training Into Psychiatric Mental Health Nursing Education

Anti-stigma interventions have become important worldwide in light of the negative consequences that the stigma of mental illness has on the recovery to health of individuals with mental illness as well as on general quality of care and public mental health. Thus, psychiatric mental health nursing courses are being targeted with early anti-stigma interventions to improve related awareness and skills among future nurses. This article firstly elaborates on the importance of the stigma issue in psychiatric care and assesses the empirical effectiveness of anti-stigma interventions in psychiatric mental health nursing education. Next, a pedagogical exemplar of integrating a “recovery patients as educators” and anti-stigma intervention into an innovative psychiatric mental health nursing course is demonstrated. Community psychiatric patients, who traditionally receive passive care from healthcare providers, were invited to attend psychiatric mental health courses with the goal of becoming educators in their communities. These courses offer nursing students and patients opportunities to interact as equals and helps these students become aware of their values, attitudes, and prejudices with regard to mental illness. This approach may help reframe their experience and learning, and guide them to clarify and integrate anti-stigma values and attitudes into their work and life. Through such experience sharing, nursing educators may be expected to brainstorm and implement the pedagogical value of anti-stigma.