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General Medical Clinicians’ Attitudes Toward People with Serious Mental Illness: A Scoping Review

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Abstract

Individuals with serious mental illness (SMI) experience significant premature mortality due to somatic conditions but often receive sub-optimal somatic care, but little research has been done to understand how general medical clinicians’ attitudes may affect care provision or health outcomes. This review describes general medical clinicians’ attitudes toward people with SMI, compares these attitudes to attitudes among mental health clinicians or toward individuals without SMI, and examines the relationship between attitudes and clinical decision making. Seventeen studies were reviewed. General medical clinicians reported negative attitudes toward individuals with SMI. These attitudes were generally more negative than attitudes among mental health clinicians and were consistently more negative when compared to attitudes toward individuals without SMI. Four studies suggest that these negative attitudes have an adverse effect on clinician decision making.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Division of General Internal Medicine, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, 2024 E Monument Street, Room 2-620, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Elizabeth M. Stone MSPH, Gail L. Daumit MD, MHS & Sarah Linden MPH

  2. Division of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Lisa Nawei Chen MD

  3. Department of Health Policy and Management, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, MD, USA

    Emma E. McGinty PhD, MS

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  1. Elizabeth M. Stone MSPH
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Correspondence to Elizabeth M. Stone MSPH.

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Stone, E.M., Chen, L.N., Daumit, G.L. et al. General Medical Clinicians’ Attitudes Toward People with Serious Mental Illness: A Scoping Review. J Behav Health Serv Res 46, 656–679 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11414-019-09652-w

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