Psychology students’ prejudice about people with substance addiction: Stigma in future healthcare professionals

The social stigma of people with addictions is a topic that has aroused great interest in recent
years. The present study aims to analyze the accuracy with which Psychology students estimate
the presence of prefrontal symptomatology in people they imagine having to treat for addictions
in their professional future. That estimate is compared with the symptomatology reported by real
people with addiction who start outpatient treatment. To this end, 262 undergraduate students in
Psychology and Master’s students in Psychopharmacology and Drugs of Abuse were recruited and
consecutively administered two versions of the Prefrontal Symptom Inventory (ISP-20): one selfreported
and one hetero-reported, in which each participant answered about an imaginary addict
who personalizes his or her image of addicts in general. On the other hand, a database of 790
people in treatment for substance addiction who had completed the ISP-20 was used. Psychology
students applied an unequivocal overestimation of symptoms of prefrontal malfunctioning in
addicted people. This overestimation was not affected by variables such as sex or age. We warn
about the potential bias presented by the participants, as they are potential Clinical or Health
Psychology professionals, and we discuss the possible sources of the derived stigma.