Prejudice About Mental Illness May Affect Medical Treatment Plans.

MedPage Today (5/24, Gever) reports, “Prejudices about individuals with mental illness play a role in many healthcare [professionals’] treatment decisions involving physical conditions,” according to research presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting. “When [professionals] of all types – even mental health professionals – were presented with hypothetical vignettes of patients with medical conditions such as obesity, the treatment plans differed markedly when the patient also had schizophrenia, said Dinesh Mittal, MD, of the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences.” Healthcare professionals “tended to assume that schizophrenia patients would be less adherent to instructions, more likely to miss appointments, and less competent at making their own medical decisions – none of which are justified by evidence, Mittal said.”

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— “Mental Illness Stigma Affects Medical Tx Plans, ” John Gever, MedPage Today, May 23, 2013.

Posted in In The News.