Development and EValuation of an Online Intervention to Reduce Self-Stigma in People With Visible Chronic Skin disEases

Background: Approximately 10 million people in Germany suffer from a chronic skin disease. Besides physical symptoms, the psychosocial burden for patients is high. A specific problem is stigmatization, which is still very burdensome for people with skin diseases. As a consequence of experienced discrimination, patients tend to accept and incorporate social prejudices, which impair self-esteem and self-efficacy, enhance isolation, and maintain a negatively self-reinforcing cycle. The World Health Organization has explicitly pointed out the importance of reducing stigma. While recent interventions for reducing external stigma in skin diseases have been developed and positively evaluated, evidence-based interventions on self-stigma in skin diseases are still lacking.

Objective: This project aims to develop and evaluate the effectiveness of an online intervention for patients with psoriasis, atopic dermatitis, hidradenitis suppurativa, alopecia areata, and vitiligo, to prevent and/or reduce self-stigma.

Methods: The evaluation of the online program will follow a randomized controlled design. 550 patients will be recruited through several participating centers across Germany and allocated to the intervention or the control group in a ratio of 1:1, with an equal distribution by diagnosis. Participants in the intervention group will attend a self-guided online program consisting of eight skin-generic modules (on average, 15-20 minutes per module, one module per week), combining educational content and cognitive-behavioral therapy-based exercises (e.g., cognitive restructuring of negative automatic thoughts; cultivating self-compassionate thinking and behavior). Participants in the control group will not attend an alternative program (waiting list) and will be offered the opportunity to attend the program after the follow-up phase. The primary outcome will be a reduction in self-stigma; the secondary outcome will be an improvement in psychosocial health, namely quality of life, depression, anxiety, and suicide ideation. These outcomes will be assessed by standardized patient-reported outcome measures at three time points: baseline (t0), immediately after the intervention (t1), and 6-month follow-up (t2).