Martínez-Martínez, Sánchez-Martínez, Sales-Orts, Dinca, Richart-Martínez, and Ramos-Pichardo (2019) [53] ; social contact.

To assess the effect of a direct contact with people with mental illness on the stigma of nursing students towards those people.

A 90-minutes session in which a mental health care provider, an individual with mental illness, and a family member telling their experiences about the mental illness. Then, a 30-minute questions and answers’ session was held.

A decrease in fear, perceived danger, avoidance, segregation, and coercive attitudes were noticed after the intervention as well as increase in positive feelings (help and compassion) among nursing students.

Sadow and Ryder (2008) [54] ; social contact.

To investigate the impact of nursing students’ exposure to personal messages delivered by an individual with mental illness in recovery on decreasing stigmatizing attitudes of nursing students towards people with mental illness.

Nursing students in the intervention group attended 3 presentations delivered by different individuals with mental illness in the recovery phase.

Decreasing in stigmatizing attitudes of student nurses towards people with mental illness.

Vaghee, Lotfabadi, Salarhaji, Vaghei, and Hashemi (2018) [55] ; social contact.

To compare the impact of a contact-based education with the impact of a commitment and acceptance-based training on empathy of student nurses towards people with mental illness.

In the contact-based education; 3 patients with stable mental illness (one had schizophrenia, one had bipolar type 1, and one had major depression) talked about their illness’ experiences. Each patient talked for one-hour session.

Both the contact-based education and the acceptance and commitment-based therapy were successful in increasing the level of empathy towards mental illness among student nurses. No significant differences were found between these two methods.

Winkler, Janoušková, Kožený, Pasz, Mladá, Weissová, Tušková, and Evans-Lacko (2017) [42] ; both social contact and video-based social contact.

To investigate the effect of short videos on reducing stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors of student nurses’ towards people with mental illness as well as compared the effect of short videos with other methods (seminar and informational leaflet).

One of the experimental groups attended a 45-minute seminar was developed by the cooperation of the authors, persons with mental illness, and mental health professionals. The seminar was presented by both a mental health professional and a person with mental illness as well. On the other hand, the other experimental group watched 3 short videos (each of them were 2 - 3 minutes).

Seminar had the strongest and the most stable positive impact on student nurses’ attitudes and behaviors towards people with mental illness. Also, short videos were effective and stable over time.