551 The stigma of psoriasis: Public and healthcare professional perceptions

Abstract

Patients with psoriasis suffer from stigmatization which contributes to reduced quality of life. There is a research gap in understanding the general public and healthcare professionals perceptions of persons with psoriasis which is required to advance efforts to reduce stigma. We conducted a quasi-experimental survey through Amazon.com's Mechanical Turk and an online survey at the Perelman School of Medicine to quantitatively assess the public and medical students perceptions of people with psoriasis. Herein, we report the results from the medical students survey compared with the general public. All participants viewed images of adults with visible psoriatic lesions and rated their emotional responses and desire to avoid the people in the images. Participants also reported their agreement with psoriasis-related myths and stereotypes, preference for having psoriasis compared to other stigmatized diseases (e.g., HIV), and if they encountered psoriasis previously. Participants from the public were living in the US (n=198, 81.8% white, 58.6% male, mean age (SD) 33.4±9.9 years). Medical students (n=187, 59.4% white, 41.2% male, mean age (SD) 29.4±8.4 years) were mostly in their second year of medical school (31.6%) and had not completed a dermatology rotation (92.5%). Most medical students had heard of (95.7%) or knew someone with (51.3%) psoriasis, which was comparatively more than the public (OR=6.77 vs. 2.96, p<.001). The photos elicited more compassion in the female medical students than males (p=0.02). Significantly less of the student sample compared to the public sample 8.6% vs. 41.9% expressed a desire to avoid the pictured persons with psoriasis and 2.1% vs. 12.1% reported belief in psoriasis misconceptions. Compared to the medical student survey results, the public reported more contempt and blame toward people with psoriasis (p<.001). Medical students appear to have more knowledge about psoriasis and less stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs towards patients with psoriasis than the general public. Our results demonstrate that provide accurate information to the general public may help to reduce stigma.