Abstract
Professionals’ limited knowledge on mental health and their stigmatizing attitudes toward mental illness can delay the diagnosis of autism. We evaluated the knowledge on Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and stigmatizing attitudes in 93 physicians at Dutch Youth and Family Centers (YFC). These physicians screen for psychiatric symptoms in children. We show that their general ASD knowledge scored 7.1 (SD 1.2), but their specific ASD knowledge was only 5.7 (SD 1.7) (weighted means on 1–10 scale, 1 = least knowledge, 10 = most knowledge). Our physicians had positive attitudes toward mental illness (CAMI scores 2.18 (SD 0.33) to 2.22 (SD 0.40) on a 5-point Likert scale) but they had higher levels of stigmatizing attitudes than other Western healthcare professionals. Their levels were considerably lower than in non-Western professionals. We found no relations between ASD knowledge, stigmatizing attitudes and demographic variables. In conclusion, ASD knowledge and stigmatizing attitudes toward mental illness in Dutch YFC physicians require attention.
Highlights
Autism spectrum disorders (ASD), as described in the DSM-5 (American Psychiatric Association 2013), are a serious global neurodevelopmental disorder with an estimated prevalence between 1 in every 59 to 132 people, with 52Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.1 3 Vol:.(1234567890)Community Mental Health Journal (2020) 56:1318–1330 mean age of an ASD diagnosis is considerably later, namely between 38 and 120 months (Daniels and Mandell 2014)
Stigmatizing attitudes toward ASD are often implicitly imbedded in ASD knowledge questionnaires (Harrison et al 2017a), we found no studies evaluating ASD stigma in healthcare professionals nor any literature on how stigma toward mental illness relates to stigma toward autism
Our study shows that a considerable group of the Youth and Family Centers (YFC) physicians have insufficient specific ASD knowledge, more research is needed to evaluate how this might affect the early detection of ASD cases
Summary
Preventive care medicine, as provided by physicians in Youth and Family Centers (YFC) in the Netherlands, has an important role in the early detection of ASD (Van Berckelaer-Onnes et al 2015). YFCs provide free preventive child healthcare in all municipalities of the Netherlands and are accessible for all parents and children, regardless of their citizenship status. The non-response policy includes contacting chain parties (e.g. school, youth services) and external parties (e.g. general practitioner, child day-care) to get in contact with the parent or child. The latter account applies when the YFCs sent invitations for their preventive consultations
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