https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0145213414002506
Pedophilia belongs to the most stigmatized and rejected mental disorders (Feldman & Crandall, 2007). Fourteen percent of the participants in a large and heterogeneous German sample agreed that PWP should better be dead and 39% recommended imprisonment, even though the instruction emphasized that the individual in question had never committed a sexual (or other) crime (while only 3% or 5%, respectively would respond similarly when alcohol abusers are concerned, Jahnke, Imhoff, & Hoyer, 2014). Among an English-speaking sample, as much as 27% agreed that PWP should better be dead and 49% recommended imprisonment (compared to 9% or 6%, respectively demanding similarly drastic measures for sexual sadists, or 21% and 8%, respectively, when people with antisocial tendencies are concerned, Jahnke et al., 2014).
Moreover, many members of the population falsely believe that pedophilia is a controllable disorder in the sense of Weiner (1985), implying that PWP can exert, at least to some degree, volitional control over whom they feel sexually attracted to (Jahnke et al., 2014). Hence, these individuals may not see pedophilia as a true mental disorder (see also Imhoff, 2014), and are thus unable or unwilling to afford it the same level of concern or deservingness of treatment that they do to other mental disorders.
Given the huge stigma directed at them, we expect many PWP to be reluctant about disclosing their sexual interests and potentially related problems to other people, including health care professionals. Although people with mental health training generally hold more positive attitudes towards people with a mental illness than those without special training (Peris, Teachman, & Nosek, 2008), they are not immune to stigmatizing attitudes that exist in their social environment and may be less motivated or capable to offer high quality treatment as a result (Schulze, 2007). In a German sample of psychotherapists, only very few participants agreed to be willing to treat PWP and a number of them justified this decision with negative attitudes towards this group (Stiels-Glenn, 2010). Thus an intervention targeting such overly pessimistic or stigmatizing views could help increasing their willingness to offer therapy. While it needs to be addressed that reluctance to treat PWP could be due to numerous other reasons, most prominently a lack of knowledge or experience in the field (Stiels-Glenn, 2010), an anti-stigma intervention could nevertheless be effective in sensitizing practitioners to the needs and problems of such clients. This in turn might motivate therapists to engage in specialized training about the treatment of PWP, or to acquire the knowledge that has previously been missing. Also, very importantly, this could help practitioners to establish a better therapeutic relationship with their patients (which may in turn promote therapy success; Martin, Garske, & Davis, 2000).
The numbers of professionals who thought that people with pedophilia would be better dead are honestly scary.