Abstract

Introduction: People with mental illnesses frequently experience stigma from health care professionals, which is why it is an urge to count with adequate assessments to evaluate stigma to address it. This manuscript describes the process of language translation and content validation in Chile of the Opening Minds Scale for the assessment of stigma against people with mental illnesses in Healthcare Practitioners (WHO-HC), originally developed in Canada. Methods: Language translation and content validation analysis were performed, including English-Spanish translation and reverse translation by professional translator, item triangulation by researchers, and content validity analysis of the translated questionnaire by expert evaluation based on the Content Validity Index (CVI), including 10 experts in academia, research, and one expert by experience. Items rated with CVI 0.51-0.99 were considered acceptable. Results: From the total of 20 items of the questionnaire, two were rated with lower CVI than acceptable, specifically related to the constructs "hope" and "compassion", part of the theoretical framework of Recovery in which the questionnaire is based on. The two items were re-evaluated including original authors to adapt them seeking fidelity to the foundational constructs, through an iterative process with experts. Conclusions: The translation of the Opening Minds Scale for Healthcare Practitioners (WHOHC) is presented, adapted to Spanish in Chile after content analysis, consisting of 20 items for the evaluation of stigma towards people with mental illness in health professionals, enabling the development of new studies to analyze criterion validity, and the exploration of feasibility and utility at the local level.