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Volume 7 Supplement 1

International Society on Brain and Behaviour: 3rd International Congress on Brain and Behaviour

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Stigma in patients with bipolar disorders

Annals of General Psychiatry volume 7, Article number: S44 (2008) Cite this article

Background

Bipolar Disorder is amongst the most common and disabling psychiatric conditions, with chronic course and significant burden of disease. Patients with Bipolar Disorders experience a significant amount of stigmatizing and discrimination because of their illness.

Material and methods

We have developed an Inventory of Stigmatizing Experiences. It is a questionnaire, which includes both a frequency and an intensity scale, and measures the prevalence and frequency of stigma experiences, with the underlying assumption being that the total score reflects the pervasiveness of stigma experienced across different life domains.

Results

Over 70 patients attending a specialized tertiary service for patients with Bipolar Disorders were screened with the Inventory of Stigmatizing Experiences. The results show that the experience of stigmatizing events and discrimination because of mental illness is very high and occurs almost universally. Some further analysis based on age, gender and diagnosis is given.

Conclusion

Stigmatizing experiences and discrimination is common in patients with Bipolar Disorders, and requires work towards reducing it.

References

  1. Stuart H, Milev R, Koller M: The Inventory of Stigmatizing Experience: its development and reliability. World Psychiatry. 2005, 4: S1

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychiatry, Queen's University, Mood Disorders Research and Treatment Service, Providence Care, Mental Health Services, Kingston, Ontario, Canada

    Rumen Milev

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  1. Rumen Milev
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Open Access This article is published under license to BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 International License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

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Cite this article

Milev, R. Stigma in patients with bipolar disorders. Ann Gen Psychiatry 7 (Suppl 1), S44 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S44

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/1744-859X-7-S1-S44

Keywords

Annals of General Psychiatry

ISSN: 1744-859X