title: Attitudes towards anorexia nervosa: volitional stigma differences in a sample of pre-clinical medicine and psychology students.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Anorexia nervosa (AN) is a highly stigmatised condition, with treatment often involving multidisciplinary care. As such, understanding and comparing the attitudes of emerging mental health and medical professionals towards AN, within the content of sex-based differences, is pertinent to facilitate the development of targeted stigma interventions.
  
  
  OBJECTIVE
  Examine the volitional stigmatisation of AN in emerging medical and mental health professionals.
  
  
  METHODS
  Participants (N = 126) were medical (n = 41) and psychology students (n = 85) who completed a range of attitudinal outcome measures (e.g. Causal Attributions Scale, Eating Disorder Stigma Scale, Opinions Scale, Characteristics Scale and Affective Reaction Scale).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Across both disciplines, men were found to exhibit significantly higher eating disorder (ED) stigma, considered AN to be a more trivial and weak illness, and attributed greater levels of blame and responsibility to AN sufferers. Men also had significantly lower biogenetic causal attributions. Compared with psychology students, medicine students exhibited slightly greater anticipation of negative reactions in response to AN, obtained higher selfish/vain scores and considered sociocultural factors to contribute "a lot" in the development and maintenance of AN.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Overall, results indicate interventions aimed at improving ED mental health literacy are needed, specifically targeting males and potentially medical students.
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Bond University , Gold Coast , Australia.
authors.forename: Amy Jean
authors.initials: AJ
authors.lastname: Bannatyne
authors.affiliation: a Department of Psychology , Bond University , Gold Coast , Australia.
authors.forename: Peta Berenice
authors.initials: PB
authors.lastname: Stapleton
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000856:Anorexia Nervosa / Q000523:psychology*; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D057545:Social Stigma; D013337:Students, Medical; D055815:Young Adult
keywords: Anorexia nervosa; eating disorders; health professionals; medicine; psychology; volitional stigma