Stigmatization as a barrier to accessing mental health services: An editorial

Stigmatization of mental health problems is a major and worldwide concern that may prevent individuals suffering from mental health conditions from accessing the treatment they need. This issue of the International Journal of Mental Health (IJMH) features four papers reporting the impact of stigmatization on access to mental health care, in different regions of the globe. In a first publication, Choudhry et al. (2023) reviewed the barriers to accessing mental health care in Pakistan and found six studies reporting stigma as the main barrier to receiving mental health services. In another study, among N1⁄4 1,720 adult Ukrainians, Jiang et al. (2023) reported that increased religious beliefs were associated with decreased treatment seeking behavior. Further, among the treatment-seeking participants, weaker religious beliefs was associated with seeking alternative mental health treatments (as opposed to conventional treatments). In another study, Subu et al. (2023) reported in a qualitative study examining N1⁄4 25 Indonesian families that stigmatization also prevented patients from accessing conventional mental health care. Taken together, these two papers pointed out that one of the main determinants of stigmatization was cultural background. While it may be difficult (and even not desirable) to target cultural and/or religious beliefs in order to support destigmatization, there may be other ways to decrease perceived stigma and increase access to care among patients with mental health conditions. In a fourth study among N1⁄4 305 South-Korean university students, increased mental health literacy was in fact associated with decreased stigmatization (Kim, 2023), suggesting that targeting mental health literacy may be helpful to decrease self-stigma. In addition, this study also found that mental health literacy might improve treatment-seeking behaviors regardless of perceived stigma. It is important to note that in addition to barriers to mental health care, individuals with mental health conditions also face barriers to accessing non-psychiatric medical care, potentially through increased perceived stigma (Ostrow et al., 2014) and stigmatizing attitudes from health care professionals (Neauport et al., 2012). Clearly, interventions to promote access to mental health care as well as health care in general are needed both in developing and industrialized countries.