Stigma on psychiatric patients is frequent not only among common people but also in healthcare professionals. Cinema might be useful tool for medical educational purposes and might help reduce negative attitudes towards mental illness.

In the first place, to develop a pilot project of cinemeducation aimed at enhancing awareness and thinking over about psychiatry and stigma in medical students; secondly, to investigate students’ stigmatizing attitudes, empathy, personality and self-esteem and the impact of the cinemeducation intervention on some of these variables.

From October 2012 to January 2013, students will attend six cinemeducation lectures focused on helping relationships. Sociodemographic data will be collected at baseline only, and so will the Temperament and Character Inventory. In order to investigate attitudes towards psychiatry, self-esteem, alexithtymia and empathy, students will be asked to fill in some self-administered scales, both at baseline and at the end of the six lectures. These scales will include: Attitudes Towards Psychiatry Scale, Social Distance Scale, Dangerousness Scale, Mental Illness: Clinicians’ Attitudes Scale, Interpersonal Reactivity Index, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Toronto Alexithymia Scale.

The correlation among the variables assessed will be investigated in order to understand whether certain personality traits, self-esteem and empathic attitude influence students’ beliefs about psychiatry. The impact of the cinemeducation lectures on stigmatizing attitudes will be investigated as well.