Understanding/Promoting Mental Health Literacy Based on Biological Explanations

描述（由申请人提供）。随着临床神经科学的迅速发展，精神障碍越来越多地用生物学机制来解释（例如，抑郁症是由化学失衡引起的）。拟议的项目将研究（i）外行和执业临床医生是否对此类生物学解释持开放态度，（ii）生物学解释如何影响临床医生和表现出症状的人对精神障碍的看法，以及（iii）如何减少生物学解释的负面影响。(i)心理健康素养是否处于易于接受精神障碍的新神经生物学解释的状态？外行和临床医生都将阅读有关患者的信息，并根据可信度或临床实践中的有用性对生物或非生物原因进行评级。拟议的项目将测试初步数据 这表明当精神障碍已经被视为更具生物学根源时，生物学解释更有说服力（例如，精神分裂症），但当疾病被认为是更心理性的（例如，社交恐惧症）。确定这些障碍，以提高临床医生和非专业人员的心理健康素养，是找到有效传播新的生物学解释给他们的方法势在必行。(ii)心理障碍的生物学解释有什么影响？虽然精神障碍的生物学属性最初被认为是 通过减少对病人的指责来减少对精神障碍的偏见，最近的研究报告说，生物学上的解释会使那些患有精神障碍的人显得更加危险和不可改变，从而导致偏见的增加。与以前的研究不同，拟议的项目将调查临床医生和有精神障碍症状的人对精神障碍的生物学归因的影响。例如，拟议的项目将验证令人震惊的初步结果，这些结果表明，当患有抑郁症状的人将其症状归因于生物因素时，他们对自己的焦虑和对症状的控制感变得更加悲观。此外，临床实践的初步结果表明，生物学解释可能会使他们对假设的精神障碍患者缺乏同情心。这些结果突出了盲目传播生物信息的危险。(iii)我们如何在向公众和临床医生传播这些信息时消除生物学解释的负面影响？最近，我们发现，当一种精神障碍被描述为由生物因素引起时，提供可治疗性信息对减少社会距离是有效的，但当它是由非生物因素引起时，这种信息就无效了。拟议项目将进一步研究有关药物疗效的信息是否能更有效地减少对生物根源的精神障碍的偏见，以及有关心理治疗在减少对非生物根源的精神障碍的偏见方面的疗效的信息。此外，拟议的项目将研究是否可以通过教授有抑郁症状的外行关于神经可塑性（例如，大脑是可塑的）和表观遗传的（例如，基因并不决定一个人的状况）。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant). As clinical neuroscience rapidly progresses, mental disorders are increasingly explained in terms of biological mechanisms (e.g., depression is caused by chemical imbalances). The proposed project will examine (i) whether laypeople and practicing clinicians are open to such biological explanations, (ii) how biological explanations impact opinions about mental disorders among clinicians and those who display symptoms, and (iii) how negative effects of biological accounts can be reduced. (i) Is mental health literacy in state to readily accept new neurobiological accounts of mental disorders? Both laypeople and clinicians will read about patients and rate biological or non-biological causes with respect to convincingness, or usefulness in clinical practice. The proposed project will test preliminary data suggesting that biological accounts are more convincing when a mental disorder is already viewed as more biologically rooted (e.g., schizophrenia), but not when a disorder is considered to be more psychological (e.g., social phobia). Identifying such obstacles for improving mental health literacy among clinicians and laypeople is imperative in finding ways to effectively disseminate new biological explanations to them. (ii) What are the effects of biological accounts of mental disorders? Although biological attributions of mental disorders were initially thought to decrease prejudice against mental disorders by reducing the blame placed on patients, recent studies reported that biological accounts can make those with disorders appear more dangerous and unchangeable, leading to increased prejudice. Unlike previous studies, the proposed project will investigate the effects of biological attributions of mental disorders in clinicians and in people with mental disorder symptoms. For instance, the proposed project will validate alarming preliminary results indicating that when people with depressive symptoms attribute their symptoms to biological factors, they become more pessimistic about their prognoses and feelings of control over their symptoms. Also, preliminary results in practicing clinicians show that biological explanations can make them less empathetic toward hypothetical clients with mental disorders. These results highlight perils in blindly disseminating biological information. (iii) How can we combat negative effects of biological explanations in disseminating such information to the general public and clinicians? Recently, we found that providing treatability information was effective in reducing social distance when a mental disorder was described as caused by biological factors but not when caused by non- biological ones. The proposed project will further examine whether information on the efficacy of medications may be more effective in reducing prejudice against biologically rooted mental disorders, and information on efficacy of psychotherapy in reducing prejudice against non-biologically rooted ones. In addition, the proposed project will examine whether pessimistic prognoses associated with biological explanations could be reduced by teaching laypeople with depressive symptoms about neural plasticity (e.g., brains are malleable) and epigenetic (e.g., genes do not predetermine one's condition).