Creating a hierarchy of mental health stigma: testing the effect of psychiatric diagnosis on stigma

Hazell, C. M., Berry, C., Bogen-Johnston, L. and Banerjee, M. (2022) Creating a hierarchy of mental health stigma: testing the effect of psychiatric diagnosis on stigma. BJPsych open, 8 (5). pp. 1-7. ISSN 2056-4724

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Abstract

Levels of mental health stigma experienced can vary as a function of the presenting mental health problem (e.g. diagnosis and symptoms). However, these studies are limited because they exclusively use pairwise comparisons. A more comprehensive examination of diagnosis-specific stigma is needed. The aim of our study was to determine how levels of mental health stigma vary in relation to a number of psychiatric diagnoses, and identify what attributions predict levels of diagnosis-specific stigma. We conducted an online survey with members of the public. Participants were assessed in terms of how much stigma they had, and their attributions toward, nine different case vignettes, each describing a different mental health diagnosis. We recruited 665 participants. After controlling for social desirability bias and key demographic variables, we found that mental health stigma varied in relation to psychiatric diagnosis. Schizophrenia and antisocial personality disorder were the most stigmatised diagnoses, and depression, generalised anxiety disorder and obsessive-compulsive disorder were the least stigmatised diagnoses. No single attribution predicted stigma across diagnoses, but fear was the most consistent predictor. Assessing mental health stigma as a single concept masks significant between-diagnosis variability. Anti-stigma campaigns are likely to be most successful if they target fearful attributions.

Publication Type: Articles
Additional Information: The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, C.M.H., upon reasonable request. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Uncontrolled Keywords: community mental health teams, Stigma and discrimination, phenomenology, rating scales, education and training.
Subjects: B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology
H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
R Medicine > RC Internal medicine > RC0321 Neuroscience. Biological psychiatry. Neuropsychiatry
Divisions: Research Entities > POWER Centre
Academic Areas > Institute of Education, Social and Life Sciences
Academic Areas > Institute of Education, Social and Life Sciences > Psychology
Related URLs:
SWORD Depositor: Publications Router Jisc
Depositing User: Publications Router Jisc
Date Deposited: 11 Oct 2022 07:34
Last Modified: 31 Oct 2022 09:18
URI: https://eprints.chi.ac.uk/id/eprint/6514

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