Interventions to reduce stigma toward people with severe mental disorders in iberoamerica: A systematic review

Abstract

Introduction: The main goal of the present review was to systematically compile data on interventions to reduce stigma in Ibero-America. Aim: To describe the characteristics and determine the main results of interventions required for reducing stigma toward people with severe mental disorders that have developed in the Latin America during 2007-2017. Materials and methods: A systematic review of articles from electronic databases such as Medline, ebscohost, Embase, lilacs, and SciELO, as well as gray literature from Google Scholar, published in English, Spanish, and Portuguese covering the period during January 2007 and December 2017 was performed. In order to evaluate the quality of the quantitative studies, the Robins criteria were used for quasi-experimental and experimental studies, and the caspe criteria were used for qualitative studies. Results: A total of 18 studies that met the inclusion criteria were selected; 75% of the studies were quantitative in nature, of which, one-quarter did not meet the quality criteria. Conclusions: Currently, there are only a few interventions established to reduce stigma in Ibero-America and they are mainly short-term. Our evaluation of the available literature facilitates the identification of the aspects that should be included in future research in order to reduce the possible biases that could arise when developing these types of studies.