Abstract
BackgroundHealthcare professionals can be a source of stigma and discrimination for people with mental illness, and anti-stigma programs are needed for this target group. However, there is no validated German language scale to assess attitudes of healthcare professionals towards people with mental illness. This study had the aim to validate the German language version of the Opening Minds Stigma Scale for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC), a self-report measure of stigmatizing attitudes.MethodsStaff (n = 392) on general psychiatric inpatient wards (excluding child, forensic and geriatric psychiatry) at five psychiatric hospitals in Switzerland (n = 3) and Germany (n = 2) participated in the study. The internal consistency of the OMS-HC was examined as well as its factor structure using exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. To assess the scale’s concurrent validity, we used the Social Distance Scale.ResultsInternal consistency for the OMS-HC total score was good (α = 0.74), acceptable for the subscales Attitudes (α = 0.62) and Social Distance (α = 0.69), and poor for the Disclosure subscale (α = 0.55). The original three-factor structure fit our data well. The OMS-HC total score and the Social Distance subscale score were significantly correlated with the Social Distance Scale, supporting concurrent validity.ConclusionThe German version of the OMS-HC demonstrated satisfactory psychometric properties and can be recommended for future research and intervention evaluation.
Highlights
Healthcare professionals can be a source of stigma and discrimination for people with mental illness, and anti-stigma programs are needed for this target group
There is no evidence that attitudes towards people with mental illness are less negative among German-speaking healthcare professionals compared to other countries [13]
We present the results of the psychometric examination of a German translation of the 15-item OMS-HC in terms of its internal consistency, factor structure and concurrent validity
Summary
Healthcare professionals can be a source of stigma and discrimination for people with mental illness, and anti-stigma programs are needed for this target group. There is no validated German language scale to assess attitudes of healthcare professionals towards people with mental illness. Mental healthcare professionals can be sources of stigma if they endorse stigmatizing attitudes. They can be agents for change and allies of people with mental illness. There is no evidence that attitudes towards people with mental illness are less negative among German-speaking healthcare professionals compared to other countries [13]. This highlights the need for measures to rigorously evaluate anti-stigma interventions for this key target group. We are not aware of a validated German language scale in this domain
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