Are mental illnesses stigmatized for the same reasons? Identifying the stigma-related beliefs underlying common mental illnesses

Abstract

Background: Although mental health stigmatization has myriad pernicious consequences, it remains unknown whether mental disorders are stigmatized for the same reasons.

Aims: This study identified the stigma-related beliefs that were associated with several common mental illnesses (Study 1), and the extent to which those beliefs predicted stigmatization (Study 2).

Methods: In Study 1, we used multidimensional scaling to identify the stigma-related beliefs attributed to nine common mental disorders (e.g. depression, schizophrenia). Study 2 explored whether beliefs commonly associated with depression predicted its stigmatization.

Results: In Study 1, we found that the nine mental illnesses differed from each other on two dimensions: social desirability and controllability. In Study 2, we found that regardless of participants’ own depression status, their perceptions that depression is controllable predicted depression-related stigmatization.

Conclusions: Our results suggest that stigmatization toward different mental illnesses stem from combinations of different stigmatized beliefs.

Keywords:

• Controllability
• schizophrenia
• depression
• mental health stigma
• reverse correlation

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Robert Nosofsky for guidance on data analyses, and Xuan Zhang, Eunice Lee and Kristie Hsu for research assistance.

Declaration of interest

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Funding

This project was supported by the American Psychological Foundation Visionary Grant and a grant from the Vice Provost for Research at Indiana University through the Faculty Research Support Program to A.C.K.