Educational approaches aim to reduce stigma by informing or upskilling audiences through workshops, training, and media campaigns, and meta-analyses have found evidence supporting their impact — but messaging choices matter. While typically easier to scale than other approaches, many educational campaigns have relied on biogenetic models of mental illness, which can reinforce stigmatising beliefs, and "myth-busting" approaches that can unintentionally increase familiarity with and reinforce the very myths they aim to dispel. The brief recommends trauma-informed, inclusion-focused messaging and presenting factual statements without focusing on myths. Lived experience perspectives highlight that educational messages may oversimplify systemic issues such as human rights, social determinants of mental ill-health, and access to timely support, making lived experience involvement in design and delivery essential.
Three Approaches to Stigma Reduction Initiatives
Overview
This implementation brief from The ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation is part of a five-part series on stigma and its impacts. It compares and contrasts three overarching categories of public stigma reduction approaches — educational, contact-based, and protest-based — outlining what each involves, examples of each in practice, key considerations, and lived experience perspectives on their strengths and limitations. The brief emphasises that meaningful stigma reduction requires ongoing work using multiple strategies rather than one-off activities, and provides guidance to support organisations in selecting and implementing approaches aligned with their aims, resources, and key messages.
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Key insights
This implementation brief, part of a five-part series on stigma and its impacts, compares three overarching approaches to public stigma reduction: educational, contact-based, and protest-based. Each approach has distinct aims, mechanisms, examples, and considerations, and each carries different implications for scalability, evidence base, and lived experience involvement. The brief emphasises that meaningful stigma reduction requires ongoing, multi-strategy effort rather than single initiatives, and that careful consideration of aims, resources, and lived experience leadership should guide the selection and implementation of any approach.
Contact-based approaches involve direct or indirect contact between audiences and people with lived experience — such as speaking engagements, documentaries, podcasts, or campaign videos — and meta-analyses support their effectiveness in reducing stigma.
These approaches are most effective when they involve direct contact, opportunities for active interaction, and diverse voices and stories, though indirect contact such as short videos is easier to scale and can reach larger audiences. Lived experience perspectives emphasise the importance of supporting the wellbeing of those involved and facilitating informed consent, and reinforce that stigma reduction requires meaningful, ongoing lived experience leadership across an organisation — not only within the delivery of a single contact-based initiative.
Protest-based approaches involve public objections to negative representations or human rights violations — including petitions, letter-writing, boycotts, and peaceful protests — and are often reactive and grassroots in nature. Compared to educational and contact-based approaches, protest-based approaches have been studied less and have fewer implementation guidelines, and their impact on individual attitudes is difficult to evaluate systematically at scale. However, where they result in systemic reform — such as changes to media representations or legislation — their impact on discriminatory processes can be more readily understood. Some protest-based activities attract controversy or negative media attention. Lived experience perspectives note that these approaches can be empowering and enable people with lived experience to lead change, but highlight the importance of access to supportive networks for those involved.
Decisions about which stigma reduction approach — or combination of approaches — to implement should be made carefully, based on alignment with the initiative's aims, available resources, and key messages. The brief identifies three guiding questions for organisations: which approach best matches the initiative's aims, resources, and messages; how people with lived experience will be involved and championed in the design and delivery of the initiative; and whether the impact will be measured. This reflects the brief's broader emphasis that effective stigma reduction is an ongoing, multi-strategy effort grounded in lived experience leadership.
Did this resource draw on transformative evidence?
Yes — The brief includes lived experience perspectives for each of the three approaches, including a direct quote from a person with lived experience sourced from the ALIVE National Centre Priorities Database. Lived experience leadership, wellbeing, informed consent, and involvement in design and delivery are emphasised across all three approaches.
Yes — The brief draws on practice-level knowledge of real-world stigma reduction initiatives, including named examples such as Time to Change, Mental Health First Aid, Mindframe Media Reporting Guidelines, Emotional CPR, Batyr's storytelling initiatives, Roses in the Ocean's Speakers' Hub, SANE's StigmaWatch program, and Not Before Time: Lived Experience Led Justice and Repair.
Yes — The brief references four key sources, including a consensus development study on population-level anti-stigma campaign messaging (Clement et al., 2010), a critical review of anti-stigma campaigns (Walsh & Foster, 2021), foundational social psychology research on discrediting psychiatric stigma (Corrigan & Penn, 1999), and a systematic meta-review of meta-analyses on stigma-reduction intervention effectiveness (McCullock & Scrivano, 2022).
How can this resource help me as a...?
Organisations planning or reviewing stigma reduction initiatives are a primary audience, with direct guidance on selecting approaches aligned with organisational aims, resources, and messaging.
Staff designing or delivering educational, contact-based, or protest-based stigma reduction activities will find practical considerations and examples relevant to their work.
The brief's framing of stigma reduction as an ongoing, multi-strategy priority, and its discussion of how protest-based approaches can drive systemic reform, makes it relevant to policymakers considering stigma reduction strategy and legislative reform.
People with lived experience who may be involved in delivering stigma reduction initiatives — as educators, speakers, or advocates — are directly addressed through the lived experience perspectives included for each approach.
The brief's emphasis on lived experience leadership across the design and delivery of all three approaches makes it directly relevant to this audience.
The brief identifies differences in the evidence base across the three approaches, including the comparatively limited research on protest-based approaches, making it relevant to researchers in stigma reduction and mental health communications.