Halsted, Candis Graduate Students’ Empathy and Attitudes: An Intervention Study. 2020. Radford University, Dissertation. Radford University Scholars' Repository.
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Abstract
Mental illness impacts roughly 46.6 million Americans each year and can be highly stigmatized. Mental illness is a disruption of one or more domains of functioning (e.g., biological, psychological, sociocultural), caused by abnormalities in brain structures, chemical signaling, or functioning that leads to distress and functional impairments. Stigma is characterized by labeling, stereotyping, negative attribution, separation, status loss, and discrimination against those with mental illness by society. Stigma can impact those with mental illness in a process through which individuals and populations are devalued for possessing a negatively viewed attribute. Provider stigma is a phenomenon through which medical and behavioral health professionals perceive and respond negatively to individuals with stigmatized characteristics in the care setting. In contrast to stigma, empathy is a cognitive skill that involves understanding another individual’s experiences and perspective, communicating this understanding, and expressing oneself in a manner aimed to prevent or diminish another’s pain and suffering. Empathy is an important counterbalance to stigma for individuals with mental illness. Providers ability to experience and express empathy may decrease the likelihood of that provider holding stigmatizing beliefs towards mentally ill individuals. Provider empathy can also affect a patient’s trust level, the formation of the provider-patient alliance, patient engagement in care, patient adherence to treatment, and the patient’s subsequent medical and mental health utilization patterns. There is a need for students in health and human services disciplines to understand how empathy and attitudes toward mental illness can affect their practice. This study aimed to evaluate empathy and attitudes towards mental illness among students across seven graduate programs while also examining relationships between empathy and attitudes regarding individuals with mental illness. A vignette-style virtual educational intervention was used to educate students regarding situations that would help identify stigma as it relates to mental illness. The intervention consists of portrayals of individuals with mental illness or who have family members with mental illness, allowing them to experience vicarious, or secondhand, exposure to stigmatized individuals. The findings of this study support the reliability of the measures used to gather data. Empathic concern scores across disciplines were found to be relatively high at baseline and strongly correlated with positive attitudes’ scores at both the preintervention and postintervention assessments. This is important because the cultivation of empathy during graduate and professional education and training has been associated with increased caring behaviors and empathetic care associated with students in a clinical setting.
| Item Type: | Dissertation |
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| Uncontrolled Keywords: | Empathy, stigma, mental illness, students, helping professions |
| Subjects: | B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology R Medicine > RT Nursing |
| Divisions: | Radford University > School of Nursing |
| Date Deposited: | 16 Feb 2022 01:49 |
| Last Modified: | 19 Apr 2023 17:05 |
| URI: | http://wagner.radford.edu/id/eprint/656 |
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