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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

EV1281

Psychological and contextual predictors of forensic stigma: A cross-sectional study in the Portuguese general population

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND CONTEXTUAL PREDICTORS OF FORENSIC STIGMA: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY IN THE PORTUGUESE GENERAL POPULATION

Stigma toward forensic patients is shaped by both personality traits and contextual factors, with the final hierarchical regression model explaining 36.5% of the total variance.

People with mental disorders are widely stigmatized, while forensic patients who have a mental disorder and have committed an offense but are deemed not criminally responsible experience a double stigma that can hinder social inclusion, recovery, and access to opportunities; this study aimed to examine the correlates and predictors of forensic stigma in a Portuguese community sample. In a cross-sectional design, 295 adults (mean age 30.70 years; 73.2% women) completed a self-report questionnaire; measures included sociodemographic information, contact with mental illness, media consumption patterns, a clinical forensic vignette assessing knowledge, beliefs, and attitudes, the Portuguese version of the Forensic Stigma Scale (FSS), the Openness to Experience, Extraversion, and Agreeableness subscales of the HEXACO, and the Toronto and Coimbra Prosocial Behavior Questionnaire (ProBeQ), which measures empathy and altruism; analyses were conducted using SPSS 28. Potential predictors identified through correlations and group comparisons were entered into a hierarchical regression model, and the final model explained 36.5% of the variance in total FSS scores (R² = 0.365; adjusted R² = 0.345; Z = 18.225; p < 0.001; ΔR² = 0.087). Significant predictors were educational level (β = -0.15; p = 0.011), openness to experience (β = -0.15; p = 0.005), contact with mental illness (β = -0.11; p = 0.028), empathy (β = -0.15; p = 0.004), and perceived media adequacy (β = 0.20; p < 0.001). Two vignette-related assessment items also emerged as significant predictors: the judgment that the person described would not be criminally responsible (β = -0.19; p < 0.001) and the judgment that the person had been psychotic two days earlier (β = -0.20; p < 0.001). Age (β = -0.04; p = 0.452) and agreeableness (β = -0.04; p = 0.394) were not significant. The authors concluded that public attitudes toward forensic patients are shaped by both psychological characteristics and contextual factors, and that these variables represent targets for interventions aimed at reducing stigma toward people with mental disorders involved in the criminal justice system.

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