Abstract:

Contact intervention is an important way to reduce the public stigma of mental disorders. Various forms of contact have been widely used in intervention studies of this approach, and have proven to be effective in reducing stigma in terms of attitude, emotion, behavior intention and so on. The effect of contact intervention depends on how the intervention is carried out and individual differences of the intervention object. Regarding implementation, effective contact intervention involves three key ingredients: people with mental disorders, information and interaction, which may be affected by certain characteristics. During study, the presence of multi-form contact, continuous contact, contact quality and other ingredients can further magnify the effect of the intervention. As for the intervention object, the effect varies according to individual differences. In the future, the study design for contact intervention should be further improved, to enrich the study of the theoretical mechanism of contact intervention, and promote development of evidence-based practices of contact intervention. In addition, further study will focus on application of contact intervention in reducing public stigma of specific groups and specific types of mental disorders, as well as verification of the effect of contact intervention in the culture of China.

Key words: public stigma of mental disorder, contact intervention, key ingredients, individual difference