Medscape (5/22, Jeffrey) reports that according to survey results presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s annual meeting, healthcare professionals, “even those involved in the delivery of mental health care, are not immune to bias against patients with serious mental illnesses.” In fact, “given two identical clinical scenarios, one of which involved a patient with schizophrenia, a group of healthcare [professionals] that included psychiatrists and primary care physicians as well as primary care and mental health nurses tended to view the patients with serious mental illness more negatively than those without mental illness, and these attitudes colored their treatment decisions, including referrals.” Jeffrey Borenstein, MD, chair of the Council on Communications of the American Psychiatric Association, said, “We use the word stigma, but I would use a different word – prejudice.”
