Public Stigma of Mental Illness in the United States: A Systematic Literature Review

Abstract

Public stigma is a pervasive barrier that prevents many individuals in the U.S. from engaging in mental health care. This systematic literature review aims to: (1) evaluate methods used to study the public’s stigma toward mental disorders, (2) summarize stigma findings focused on the public’s stigmatizing beliefs and actions and attitudes toward mental health treatment for children and adults with mental illness, and (3) draw recommendations for reducing stigma towards individuals with mental disorders and advance research in this area. Public stigma of mental illness in the U.S. was widespread. Findings can inform interventions to reduce the public’s stigma of mental illness.

Contextualizing public stigma: Endorsed mental health treatment stigma on college and university campuses

“…Since Erving Goffman's (1963) seminal work on the topic, the volume of research on stigma has rapidly expanded, spawning multiple major review articles in the past two decades alone (Clement et al 2015;Corrigan, Druss, and Perlick 2014;Gulliver, Griffiths, and Christensen 2010;Link and Phelan 2001;Major and O'Brien 2005;Parcesepe and Cabassa 2013;Pescosolido and Martin 2015). This heightened attention is, in part, due to the important associations between stigma and the severity of mental illness symptoms (Andrade et al 2014;Brown 2017;Drapalski et al 2013), disclosure of conditions to friends, family, and healthcare professionals (Dew et al 2007;Donnelly 2017;Prior et al 2003), self-esteem (Corrigan 2004;Corrigan and Watson 2002;Corrigan, Watson, and Barr 2006), and treatment-seeking behavior (Clement et al 2015;Tsang, Fung, and Chung 2010;Vogel, Wade, and Haake 2006).…”

Stigma of mental illness and multicultural counseling self-efficacy : investigating the implications of the multicultural training environment, mental health literacy, and empathy.

“…Clearly, the public education that accompanied advances in neuroscience, while apparently received as intended, was not associated with decreased levels of mental illness stigma. Similar findings were reported by Parcesepe and Cabassa (2013), whose systematic review of literature addressing the public stigma of mental illness from 1988…”

“…Interestingly, the most stigmatized groups found in the analysis were children with depression and adults with drug dependence (Parcesepe & Cabassa, 2013).…”

“…beliefs, about mental illness that lead to the public's fear, rejection, avoidance, and discrimination against people who have a mental illness (Corrigan, 2016;Parcesepe & Cabassa, 2013). Similar to other forms of bias and prejudice, such as racism and sexism, the public stigma of mental illness matters because it "sets the context in which individuals in the community respond to the onset of mental health problems, clinicians respond to individuals who come for treatment, and public policy is crafted" (Pescosolido et al, 2010(Pescosolido et al, , p. 1324.…”

“…Wei et al (2012) specifically considered the effects of fear associated with counseling a client who was racially different on a counselor's multicultural counseling self-efficacy. A number of researchers have documented the association of fear and public stigma of mental illness (e.g., Angermeyer et al, 2010;Corrigan, 2016;Parcesepe & Cabassa, 2013). Although Rogers (1987) suggested that counselors identify with a client's fear as a means of developing empathy, it could be that a counselor's own, perhaps unidentified, fear is the greater barrier to empathic response.…”