Retrospective Study
Copyright ©The Author(s) 2015. Published by Baishideng Publishing Group Inc. All rights reserved.
World J Psychiatr. Mar 22, 2015; 5(1): 118-125
Published online Mar 22, 2015. doi: 10.5498/wjp.v5.i1.118
Associative stigma in family members of psychotic patients in Flanders: An exploratory study
Kirsten Catthoor, Didier Schrijvers, Joost Hutsebaut, Dineke Feenstra, Philippe Persoons, Marc De Hert, Jozef Peuskens, Bernard Sabbe
Kirsten Catthoor, Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatrisch Ziekenhuis Stuivenberg, B2060 Antwerpen, Belgium
Kirsten Catthoor, Didier Schrijvers, Bernard Sabbe, Collaborative Antwerp Psychiatric Research Institute, Campus Drie Eiken, 2610 Wilrijk, Belgium
Joost Hutsebaut, Dineke Feenstra, De Viersprong (Landelijk Centrum voor Persoonlijkheidsproblematiek), 4661 EP Halsteren, The Netherlands
Philippe Persoons, Marc De Hert, Jozef Peuskens, Department Neurosciences KU Leuven, Campus Kortenberg, UPC KU Leuven, 3000 Leuven, Belgium
Author contributions: Catthoor K designed the study, collected the data and drafted the article; Persoons P participated in the design of the study; Persoons P and Feenstra D performed statistical analysis; Schrijvers D, Hutsebaut J and Feenstra D interpreted the results; De Hert M, Peuskens J and Sabbe B revised the paper critically; all authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Ethics approval: The study was reviewed and approved by the University Centre Sint-Jozef Kortenberg Institutional Review Board.
Informed consent: All study participants, patients as well as the interviewed family members, provided verbal informed consent prior to study enrollment.
Conflict-of-interest: The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Data sharing: Technical appendix, statistical code, and dataset available from the corresponding author at kirstencatthoor@yahoo.com. Participants did not give informed consent for data sharing at the time of the interviews.
Open-Access: This article is an open-access article which was selected by an in-house editor and fully peer-reviewed by external reviewers. It is distributed in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial (CC BY-NC 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt, build upon this work non-commercially, and license their derivative works on different terms, provided the original work is properly cited and the use is non-commercial. See: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/
Correspondence to: Kirsten Catthoor, MD, Department of Psychiatry, Psychiatrisch Ziekenhuis Stuivenberg, Lange Beeldekensstraat 267, B2060 Antwerpen, Belgium. kirstencatthoor@yahoo.com
Telephone: +32-478-353957 Fax: +32-3-2177752
Received: August 18, 2014
Peer-review started: August 18, 2014
First decision: November 14, 2014
Revised: December 23, 2014
Accepted: January 9, 2015
Article in press: January 12, 2015
Published online: March 22, 2015
Processing time: 217 Days and 9.6 Hours
Core Tip

Core tip: Associative stigma is an extension of psychiatric stigma to those who care for patients, like family members. Scientific evidence on associative stigma in family members of psychotic patients is abundant, but culturally determined. This study tried to study the presence and severity of associative stigma in family members of psychotic patients in Flanders (Belgium) and evaluate factors to delineate subgroups vulnerable for higher associative stigma. The results show that associative stigmatization is a marked problem for parents and partners of psychotic patients: it is higher than so far demonstrated in previous international research. Disruptive behavior by the patient towards in-housing family members is the most accurate predictor of higher associative stigma. A better understanding of this complex phenomenon is certainly warranted, in order to perform more adequate clinical interventions towards family members of psychotic patients, to lower this destructive burden.