250 labels used to stigmatise people with mental illness

Abstract

Background: The stigma against people with mental illness is a major barrier to help-seeking in young people for mental health problems. The objective of this study was to investigate the extent of stigma in relation to treatment avoidance in 14 year-old school students in England in relation to how they refer to people with mental illness.

Mental health literacy about depression and schizophrenia among Swedish teenagers: a vignette study

“…There is also evidence that teenagers suffering from a mental disorder are exposed to higher levels of stigma than older people (Thara & Srinivasan, 2000) and this may be due to the fact that younger people tend to have more negative attitudes towards mentally ill (Stuart & Arboleda-Florez, 2001). Young people's stigmatizing attitudes have also been confirmed by another study which found that they tend to use strongly negative terms to describe mentally ill (Rose, Thornicroft, Pinfold & Kassam, 2007). Some of these terms were "freak", "psycho", "nuts" and "crazy".…”

The malleability of stigmatizing attitudes: Combining imagined social contact with implicit attitude feedback

“…Research high-lights that 70% to 80% of the general public hold the belief that individuals with a mental illness are dangerous and unpredictable (Crisp, Gelder, Rix, Meltzer, & Rowland, 2000;Dickerson, Sommerville, & Origoni, 2002;Pescosolido, Monahan, Link, Stueve, & Kikuzawa, 1999). The ubiquity of such beliefs is further evidenced by findings suggesting that by age 14 years, high school students can generate as many of 250 stigmatizing labels related to mental ill health (Rose, Thornicroft, Pinfold, & Kassam, 2007). Underpinned by a social-cognitive model, stigmatising attitudes towards mental ill health may also translate into discrimination as an individual responds to their attitudes and emotions (Corrigan, 2002).…”

“…In the current study, participants' explicit attitudes revealed a slight stigmatizing attitude towards individuals with a mental illness, regardless of experimental condition. Through the lens of the REC model (Hayes et al, 2001) it is conceivable that the strength of participants' attitudes, captured by explicit measurements, may reflect the generalized societal or meritocratic view that individuals with a mental illness are dangerous (Dickerson et al, 2002;Menatti et al, 2012;Rose et al, 2007;Rüsch, Todd, Bodenhausen, & Corrigan, 2010), rather than participants' own beliefs. This viewpoint provides additional support for the notion that explicit attitude measures might be vulnerable to contextual control (Corrigan & Shapiro, 2010;Davies, 1997;Rydell & McConnell, 2006;Schwarz, 1999;Power et al, 2009).…”

“…IRAP trial types were categorized in line with previous research (Crisp et al, 2000;Dickerson et al, 2002;Menatti et al, 2012;Pescosolido et al, 1999;Rose et al, 2007) and reflected participants' consistent or inconsistent verbal relations (Power et al, 2009). .…”

“…The sample stimuli of 'mentally ill person' was paired with the comparison of 'physically ill person' due to previous research which found that participants were both implicitly and explicitly biased towards individuals with a mental illness compared to those with a physical illness (Teachman, Wilson, & Kamarovskaya, 2006). Negative evaluative target relations were selected from a list of words that are commonly associated with mental illness (Rose et al, 2007).…”