The mediating effect of social support on the relationship between the impact of experienced stigma and mental health.

Abstract

The impact of stigma and discrimination against persons with mental illness is well documented. Less well researched are the interpersonal and intrapersonal mechanisms that mediate how acts of discrimination impact persons with mental illness, specifically social support. Past research has focused on the buffering, or moderating impact of perceived social support. We hypothesize that perceived social support is a psychological process, changed by interactions with the outside world, including stressful interactions. In this study, we explore perceived social support as a mediator between the impact of experienced discrimination and mental health. We also test the moderating hypotheses as a way to determine if past research on the role of perceived social support is a better model than the mediating model. We used data from a subset of the Canadian Community Health Survey-Mental Health. We tested the mediating role of perceived social support using the bootstrapped estimate of the 95% confidence interval of the indirect effect. We also tested the buffering hypothesis of perceived social support, using the product of the impact of decimation measure and perceived social support measure. The results suggest that perceived social support does mediate the relationship between the impact of experienced discrimination and mental health. The buffering hypothesis did not hold. Results suggest a new way to model the relationship of perceived social support, stigma, and mental health. Further, the results provide insights into the importance of intervening at the point of discrimination.

Racial and Gender Discrimination Predict Mental Health Outcomes among Healthcare Workers Beyond Pandemic-Related Stressors: Findings from a Cross-Sectional Survey

“…Our findings support the social causation model, which theorizes that experiencing discrimination damages social connections, leading to heightened psychological distress [9,10]. Other studies have also identified that race-based and mental illness-based discrimination had indirect effects on mental health outcomes through social support [10,46,47]. Although no studies to our knowledge have tested this model among HCWs, qualitative studies have identified that minority and female HCWs face discrimination in terms of social exclusion and isolation [30,48] that could prevent them from accessing the mental health benefits of social support.…”

Mental health stigma among people of color: An examination of the impact of racial discrimination

“…There is emerging clinical evidence that values-clarification can be beneficial in the face of racism (West, Graham, & Roemer, 2013), though this has not been examined among individuals experiencing mental health problems or severe mental illness and is an important question for future study. In addition, building positive social relationships with individuals who share similar marginalized experiences and identities may also promote resilience, and positive mental health in the face of dual stigmatization (Kondrat, Sullivan, Wilkins, Barrett, & Beerbower, 2018).…”

Ethnic Minority Health and Employment: Ethnic Differences in the Protective Effect of Close Social Ties

“…According to the socalled social buffer hypothesis (Cohen and McKay 1984), negative effects of stressors on health and well-being are reduced or even eliminated by receiving social support from social ties. This hypothesized moderation effect has been empirically found in multiple studies across various contexts (Barth et al 2010;Bowen et al 2014;Cohen and Wills 1985;Earnshaw et al 2015;Holtfreter et al 2017;Holt-Lunstad et al 2010;Kondrat et al 2017;Matos et al 2017;Thoits 1995Thoits , 2011Uchino 2004Uchino , 2009). Social support could be influential in the relation between health problems and employment by providing different types of social support.…”