Insights into a Novel Measure of Childhood Mental Illness Stigma from the Stigmatizer′s Perspective

Developing psychometric instruments for understanding childhood mental illness stigma is challenging due to the complexity of the stigma concept. The objective of the present study was to validate a novel measure of childhood mental illness stigma from the perceiver´s perspective using modern psychometric techniques and to critically reflect on the insights generated by the results. A convenience sample of 290 Brazilian elementary schoolteachers was investigated for the presence of personal stigma (PS) and perceived public stigma (PPS). The items of each stigma type were analyzed using Item Response Theory. A 20-item Likert instrument was developed and validated allowing comparison of levels of PS and PPS. Although all items showed good potential for discriminating individuals with different levels of stigma, the items dangerousness, fear and intellectual disability exhibited greatest discriminative power. The difference in an individual’s perceived behavior/attitude of others compared to their own was observed and described as the distance between PS and PPS. We report important insights into the novel measure of childhood mental illness stigma from the stigmatizer´s perspective which can help plan topics to be addressed and new approach strategies for anti-stigma campaigns in child mental health.