中華心理衛生協會

Purpose: The psychiatric stigma greatly affects symptom manifestation and illness behaviors of Chinese patients. However, there is still lacking a self-report scale that may be helpful for empirical research. Methods: Through literature review and case interviews, the present study aimed to embrace the Chinese characteristics into assessment tool and developed a 25-item Perceived Psychiatric Stigma Scale. Data of 255 psychiatric outpatients and 34 inpatients were used to establish reliability and validity of the scale. Results: The Cronbach's α was .94 and test-retest reliability with 1-week interval was. 90. Moreover, factor analysis yielded three factors, i.e., fear of social ostracism, concerns over marital preclusion, and self-deprecation. The averaged scale score was higher in the outpatients with severe psychiatric illnesses than those with mild psychiatric illnesses, and the perceived stigma of inpatients could predict low self-esteem assessed 1 week later. The 12-item short version of the scale formed based on factor loadings was also noted to have satisfactory reliability and validity. Conclusions: To sum up, this scale and its short version are applicable to assess the perceived psychiatric stigma in Chinese societies for both clinical service and psychopathological research.