Studies have shown that family members who care for relatives with severe mental illness experience mental illness stigmatization and discrimination, as well as consumers, leading to feelings of self-blame, incompetence, withdrawal from social supports and increased caregiver burden and/or depression. The proposed research aims to reduce the adverse effects of stigma directed towards family caregivers of people with schizophrenia by assessing the feasibility, acceptability and initial efficacy of a program developed by NAMI-Connecticut (Trade Zavatsky, Program Director, P.I.) and researchers at Mount Sinai (Deborah Perlick, Ph.D., P.I.), termed In Our Own Voice-Family Companion (IOOV-FC). IOOV-FC is modeled after In Our Own Voice (IOOV), developed by the National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) to reduce stigma directed towards consumers. During Year 1, 10 each of family members, consumers and clinicians will evaluate the acceptability and construct validity of the prepilot version of IOOV-FC and 2 focus groups of each stakeholder will convene to identify the stigma-related needs of family members to develop a new version of IOOV-FC. IOOV-FC aims to improve stigma coping through contact and social comparison with other families in a peer-led discussion of mental illness stigma encountered from the onset of symptoms to recovery. Twelve family members will be trained to deliver IOOV-FC. Families of consumers with schizophrenia will be randomized to receive either IOOV-FC (N = 70) or a family education course delivered by an expert (N = 70) and will be evaluated pre- intervention, immediately and 3 and 6 months post-intervention on measures of self-stigma and social withdrawal. The major analysis will be a mixed effects model in which time, treatment group, and their interactions (time x treatment group) are fixed effects, and subjects are random effects;likelihood ratio tests will evaluate group differences at each follow-up point. Because mental illness stigma is a barrier to mental health service use, and families influence consumers'use of services, equipping families to better cope with mental illness stigma will facilitate access to mental health care for both consumers and their family members. The proposed research represents a novel approach to improving stigma coping based on sound social psychological principles and modeled after a widely-disseminated anti-stigma program for consumers.
| Perlick, Deborah A; Nelson, Ann H; Mattias, Kate et al. (2011) In our own voice-family companion: reducing self-stigma of family members of persons with serious mental illness. Psychiatr Serv 62:1456-62 |
