Stigma towards mental health patients exists within health systems worldwide, affecting high- and low-income countries alike. Stigmatizing beliefs held by health professionals toward mental illness can have detrimental health impacts on the patients. These stigmatizing beliefs against mental health patients within the health system have been noted across South Asia, including Nepal. Two sources of stigmatizing beliefs towards mental illness are explicit (conscious) and implicit (unconscious) attitudes held by health professionals. There is a dearth of research that investigates both explicit and implicit attitudes of health professionals towards mental health in South Asia though. One method to reduce stigma is through contact with people who suffer from mental illness. However, there is a gap in the literature on low- and middle-income countries integrating contact with mental health service users in health provider trainings. Forthcoming research in Nepal is exploring the causal impact of service user involved mental health trainings of health professionals on explicit and implicit attitudes as well as clinical care, but this research has yet to investigate the effects of service user training on health professional students (in progress). Research efforts on mental health trainings should be expanded to student populations to reduce negative attitudes before providers enter the workforce.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate whether information-based training with or without service user testimony is more effective at reducing implicit and explicit biases toward mental health patients and increasing clinical care in Nepali health professional students. The findings from this study will fill the gap in research that evaluates intervention efficacy of reducing stigma towards mental health patients in Nepali student health education. By implementing mental health trainings, the long-term goals of this intervention are to reduce stigma held by health professionals against mental health patients and improve clinical care in Nepal by reducing negative implicit and explicit attitudes.
