Gender Differences in Reactions to Mental Illness Labeling: The Role of Agency and Communion

ABSTRACT

Numerous individual characteristics influence responses to receiving a mental health diagnosis, including gender. This study sought to determine how gender influences reactions to being labeled as depressed or not depressed, which were categorized as falling into themes of communion or agency. Using the themes developed by Niedzwienska (2003), 168 college students’ responses to depression labels were coded as a part of a laboratory experiment. The results indicate that the expected sex differences do exist, but multivariate analyses indicate that the choice of communal themes was influenced by sex but the use of agency themes was not influenced by sex.

KEYWORDS:

• labeling
• mental illness
• self-construals

Notes

¹ Direct all correspondence to Chivon H. Fitch, 411 North Walk, Indiana, PA 15705, [email protected].

² Reproduced from Niedzwienska (Niedźwieńska 2003, p. 324).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chivon H Fitch

CHIVON FITCH is an Assistant Professor of Criminology at Indiana University of Pennsylvania. Her research interests include gender and crime, informal social control, and prostitution. Specifically, her research focuses on the mechanisms of social control that produce different behaviors in women and men, particularly offending. Dr. Fitch’s work was most recently published in Sociology Compass. This article examines the potential of enhancing criminological explanations of offending by incorporating theoretical advances offered by the sociology of emotions. Her work has also been published in the Journal of Family Issues, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and the Encyclopedia of Women and Crime. She holds a BA in psychology from Penn State University, an MA in Sociology from Edinboro University, and a PhD in Sociology from Kent State University.

Dr. JESSICA L. BURKE is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Francis Marion University. Her research focuses on examining interracial relationships from a stress process approach, applying identity theory to domestic violence, with a particular emphasis on female perpetrators, and using identity theory to examine the impact stigmatized identities have on well-being and mental health. Dr. Burke has a peer-reviewed article in Race, Gender, and Class. This article examines psychological distress among Latino intra-ethnic and inter-ethnic relationships. She has also published a book chapter on interracial relationships and cultural metaphors, and has co-authored two book chapters for an edited volume on domestic violence. She has presented her research at various national and regional conferences, including the Society for the Study of Social Problems, the Society for the Study of Symbolic Interaction, the Southern Sociological Society, and the American Society of Criminology.

Will Kalkhoff

WILL KALKHOFF is a Professor of Sociology at Kent State University. He is also the Co-director of the Electrophysiological Neuroscience Laboratory of Kent and is the Chair elect for the Evolution, Biology, and Society section of the American Sociological Association. His research interests include social psychology and neurosociology. His most recent authored and co-authored publications in these areas appear in New Directions in Identity Theory & Research (Oxford University Press), the Handbook of the Social Psychology of Inequality (Springer Press), the Handbook of Neurosociology (Springer Press), and several peer-reviewed outlets, including Advances in Group Processes, Emotion, Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain, and Cognition, Social Psychology Quarterly, and Social Science Research. Current research projects focus on inter-brain synchronization and relational cohesion, the neurodynamics of social status, and the neural bases of racial discrimination in criminal sentencing. He holds a BA in sociology from Marquette University and both an MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Iowa.