Reducing Dementia-Related Stigma: A Meta-Analytic Review of Interventions

Dementia is a prevalent diagnosis, with individuals and their families affected by disease challenges including dementia-related stigma. Dementia-related stigma may lead to isolation, infantilization, discrimination, and a poorer quality of life. Stigma-reduction interventions have been implemented to combat these harms. This meta-analytic review examined seven dementia-related stigma reduction studies, totaling 13 interventions and 26 effect sizes. Overall, treatment groups had nonsignificant reductions in stigmatizing views (g = −.24) and improved quality of life (g = .20). Quality of life was a significant predictor of stigma reduction (β = −1.0732, P = .004), even though a nonsignificant correlation between quality of life and stigma was found (r = −.49, P = .09). This meta-analytic review highlights the difficult-to-change nature of dementia-related stigma, as well as the dearth of consensus among the field when it comes to intervention methods and measurement protocols for nuanced phenomena like stigma or quality of life.