Trial reportEpidemiology and psychiatric sciences2019
Effects of biomedical messages and expert-recommended messages on reducing mental health-related stigma: a randomised controlled trial.
Trial report in Epidemiology and psychiatric sciences, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 13 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
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Who cites it
13 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- Interventions to Reduce Mental Health Stigma in Young People: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis.JAMA network open · 2025Pooled it
- Scale development and an educational program to reduce the stigma of schizophrenia among community pharmacists: a randomized controlled trial.BMC psychiatry · 2021Trial
- Design of a mobile mental health stigma reduction application for depression and anxiety: User centered design.SSM. Mental health · 2026Article
- Navigating mental health issues: exploring cultural causal attribution, stigmatization, and care recommendation behavior in Pakistani adolescents and young adults.BMC psychology · 2025Article
- Mental health help-seeking knowledge, attitudes and behaviour among male elite rugby players: the role of masculine health-related values.BMJ open sport & exercise medicine · 2025Article
- Comparative study of eating behavior between patients with mental illness and healthy controls using the Japanese version of the Dutch Eating Behavior Questionnaire.Asia Pacific journal of clinical nutrition · 2024Article
- Psychiatrists' occupational stigma conceptualization, measurement, and intervention: A literature review.World journal of psychiatry · 2023Review
- Public Stigma Related to People With Mental Health Conditions Among Japanese Company Employees.Journal of clinical medicine research · 2023Article
- Effect of a Virtual Reality Contact-Based Educational Intervention on the Public Stigma of Depression: Randomized Controlled Pilot Study.JMIR formative research · 2022Article
- Letter to the editor: In response to 'effects of work conditions and organizational strategies on nurses' mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic'.Journal of nursing management · 2022Article
- Association of mental health help-seeking with mental health-related knowledge and stigma in Japan Rugby Top League players.PloS one · 2021Article
- The potential impact of an anti-stigma intervention on mental health help-seeking attitudes among university students.BMC psychiatry · 2020Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
aimsMental health-related stigma is a major challenge associated with the huge mental health treatment gap. It has remained unclear what kind of educational content is effective in reducing the stigma. Whether biomedical messages (BMM) about mental illness are effective or harmful in decreasing stigma is controversial. To investigate whether BMM can improve practically useful knowledge of mental illness, comparably to recommended messages (RCM) advocated by experts, of types such as 'recovery-oriented', 'social inclusion/human rights' and 'high prevalence of mental illnesses' through a randomised controlled trial (RCT).
methodThis study is an individual-level RCT with a parallel-group design over 1 year, conducted in Tokyo, Japan. A total of 179 participants (males n = 80, mean age = 21.9 years and s.d. = 7.8) were recruited in high schools and universities, and through a commercial internet advertisement in June and July 2017, without any indication that the study appertained to mental health. Participants were allocated to the BMM and RCM groups. They underwent a 10-min intervention, and completed self-report questionnaires during baseline, post-test, 1-month follow-up and 1-year follow-up surveys. The primary outcome measures were practically useful knowledge of mental illness at the post-test survey using the Mental Illness and Disorder Understanding Scale (MIDUS). Analysis was conducted in October 2018.
resultsBoth groups demonstrated improved MIDUS score in the post-test survey, and showed similar intervention effects (F(1, 177) = 160.5, p < 0.001, η2 = 0.48). The effect of the interventions continued until the 1-year follow-up survey (B [95% CI] = -2.56 [-4.27, -0.85], p < 0.01), and showed no difference between groups. The reported adverse effect that BMM increase stigma was not confirmed.
conclusionsBMM may have a positive impact on stigma, comparable to RCM. These findings may encourage reconsideration of the content of messages about mental health, as it is indicated that combining BMM and RCM might contribute to an effective anti-stigma programme.
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