Attitudes Towards Antidepressant Medications Among Neuroscience Students

Stigma is a common reason many individuals do not seek out and adhere to treatment for mental health concerns, such as depression. Untreated mental illness can negatively impact an individual’s function, mood, and in extreme causes can lead to suicide, thus it is imperative to find ways to reduce stigma. To date most interventions are targeted to reduce stigma towards individuals with mental illness, while few target stigma towards treatment of mental illness. The present study expands upon previous research on the utility of education in destigmatizing antidepressants. 257 undergraduate students enrolled in Introduction to Neuroscience completed a retrospective pre-post questionnaire to assess knowledge and level of stigma towards antidepressants. Wilcoxon signed-rank tests showed that from the beginning to the end of the course, students were significantly less likely to believe that antidepressants are addictive substances (p < 0.05), unnatural for the body and mind (p < 0.05), more bad than good (p < 0.05), and prescribed too frequently (p < 0.05). An additional exploratory analysis using a mixed model ANOVA was performed to examine differences between students interested in pursuing a healthcare career relative to students uninterested in healthcare. From beginning to the end of the course content, including topics such as mental illness, serotonin systems, and reuptake inhibition, students showed significant reduction of stigma. This suggests that education of the neurobiological basis of mental illness should be considered for future education-based interventions to minimize stigma towards medicative treatments of mental illness.Bachelor of Scienc