Opening minds in Canada: targeting change.

OBJECTIVE: To summarize the ongoing activities of the Opening Minds (OM) Anti-Stigma Initiative of the Mental Health Commission of Canada regarding the 4 groups targeted (youth, health care providers, media, and workplaces), highlight some of the key methodological challenges, and review lessons learned. METHOD: The approach used by OM is rooted in community development philosophy, with clearly defined target groups, contact-based education as the central organizing element across interventions, and a strong evaluative component so that best practices can be identified, replicated, and disseminated. Contact-based education occurs when people who have experienced a mental illness share their personal story of recovery and hope. RESULTS: Results have been generally positive. Contact-based education has the capacity to reduce prejudicial attitudes and improve social acceptance of people with a mental illness across various target groups and sectors. Variations in program outcomes have contributed to our understanding of active ingredients. CONCLUSIONS: Contact-based education has become a cornerstone of the OM approach to stigma reduction. A story of hope and recovery told by someone who has experienced a mental illness is powerful and engaging, and a critical ingredient in the fight against stigma. Building partnerships with existing community programs and promoting systematic evaluation using standardized approaches and instruments have contributed to our understanding of best practices in the field of anti-stigma programming. The next challenge will be to scale these up so that they may have a national impact.

Public opinion on media presence in the courthouse.

Very little attention has been devoted to the public's opinion of media coverage of court cases despite extensive research on pretrial publicity (PTP). Following a provincial judgment to restrict media access in Quebec courthouses, a preliminary unpublished study found that the public was largely in support of these restrictions. The present study sought to expand on this finding in a more widely generalizable sample. Subjects were recruited from continuing education classes and completed a questionnaire that assessed their support for restricting journalists in courthouses. Nearly 80% of the 243 participants supported media restrictions. Although participants in the four experimental conditions and one of the control groups were largely in favor of the restrictions, one control group was opposed to the restrictions. The results suggest that the public prefers that journalists have restricted access to courtroom participants, resonating research on PTP and the Supreme Court's decision on the case.