Empathy’s effect in reducing stigma towards mental illness: an intervention study on attitudes to schizophrenia using media moderated contact

Current research into stigma in mental health has looked into the effects of education and contact. Research has stated that direct contact has a better success rate in reducing stigma than that of education. Research has also shown that media-moderated contact (video contact with mental illness sufferers) can be just as successful in reducing stigma. Research has not however investigated why contact is so important in reducing stigma. Some literature suggests that it is the psychosocial components of contact which makes it a successful intervention strategy and that contact can elicit feelings of empathy, which in turn promotes prosocial behaviours and reduces stigma. This study looked into the effects of empathy, relating to a contact intervention type, on the mental illness schizophrenia.

This study also investigated whether an intervention’s effectiveness is moderated by initial levels of: pre-existing contact with mental illness, dispositional empathy, and emotional intelligence. This was conducted using a media moderated intervention involving three interventions of: 1. Contact Empathy, which consisted of video contact with a person who has schizophrenia. 2. Non-Contact Empathy, which consisted of an alternate contact type of a mental health professional talking about the experience of schizophrenia. 3. Educational Control Intervention, which consisted of a person speaking about mental illness from a factual and knowledge-based perspective. It was hypothesised that: 1. Eliciting empathy would influence the outcome variables (empathy towards mental illness, stigma towards mental illness, attitudes towards schizophrenia) and 2. Pre-existing levels of contact, dispositional empathy and emotional intelligence would moderate the effect on an intervention. Results of the ANCOVA showed no significant main effect of intervention type, nor interaction with the effect of intervention with any of the moderators. Limitations and implications are discussed.