Socio-educational interventions with pre-service school teachers to reduce stigma in mental health

Abstract

This study examined the effect of three socio-educational interventions in teacher training students on the reduction of stigma: a serious game called Stigma-Stop, a program based on direct contact between students and people with mental health problems, and the broadcast of a documentary with a talk from a professional. The sample consisted of 120 undergraduates of the Degree in Teaching in Early Childhood Education and the Degree in Teaching in Primary Education of a Spanish university, with a pretest-posttest experimental design, the participants were randomly divided into three experimental groups and a control group. The results show a statistically significant reduction in stigma levels between the pretest and posttest in the three interventions, but not in the control group, which remained stable in both measurements. This showed that the three interventions were effective in reducing stigma, predominantly in the danger dimension and the total score.