Although this research utilised a large sample, the sample was taken from only one school. It therefore should be acknowledged that there may be issues regarding the representativeness of the findings.
However, despite this the characteristics of the sample were in line with local population statistics and results from this study do draw attention to specific areas that current and future anti-stigma packages and future researchers should perhaps attend to.
The first is that children require disorder-specific information as they display different attitudes towards different disorders. Secondly, the differences found in cognitive and conative attitudes expressed towards ADHD, depression and LD suggest that interventions to combat stigma need to address both the cognitive and conative aspects of attitudes in relation to different disorders.
The finding that depression and LD differed in cognitive attitudes but there were no differences between these disorders in conative attitudes suggests that cognitive and conative attitudes are not always linked. The results indicate that in future research the cognitive attitude concept depicted by the ACL needs breaking down. For example, empathetic negative adjectives such as sadness and loneliness require separation from non-empathetic adjectives such as dishonesty and greed.
The findings suggest that children differ in the levels of empathy they display towards those with different disorders. Empathy in this context is that children are seemingly aware that others may be different and may ascribe empathetically negative attributes to them, but this does not necessarily impact on them wishing to be socially distant from these children. The ADHD vignette did not receive an empathetic response on either questionnaire. More research is needed to investigate this discrepancy and establish ways in which an empathetic response can be encouraged towards children with difficulties such as ADHD.
Additionally, the results from this research suggest that intervention packages such as those from the ‘Tackling Stigma’ campaign should continue incorporating contact with those suffering from MHD and LD within their programmes. However, there have been criticisms of contactbased approaches as those with MHD have to disclose their difficulties and may be at risk of the exact stigma that the intervention aimed to prevent (Godot, 2010). The current findings suggest that ‘actual’ contact may not be necessary in order to improve attitudes. A child believing they have had contact was shown to be enough to result in positive attitudes. Previous studies have shown that numerous methods can be used to simulate contact with positive results, such as the performing arts (Twardzicki, 2008) and puppets (Pitre, Stewart and Adams et al., 2007). As a consequence future interventions could incorporate less stigmatising methods of self-disclosure.
Finally, these findings suggest that anti-stigma packages need to take into account a developmental approach in order to combat stigma. It would appear that stigmatising attitudes increase after age 9. Children aged 7–9 years have been found to have a more limited understanding of what MHD are and the characteristics of MHD (Spitzer and Cameron, 1995; Wahl, 2002) and could therefore be less likely to stigmatise because of a lack of knowledge and understanding. The current findings suggest that as children age and become more aware of differences they become more stigmatising; therefore, children should be targeted early.