Browsing by Subject "Mental illness"

Extensive evidence demonstrates how mental illness symptomatology can inhibit perceptions of and actual performance on important tasks. However, receiving treatment from the medical establishment for such symptomatology requires diagnosis, whereby the patient becomes labeled and subject to the stereotypes connected to that label. Mental illness labeling is associated with a variety of negative outcomes including inhibited access to unemployment, housing, health insurance, and marriage and parenthood opportunities and can disrupt interpersonal relationships. However, the repercussions of mental illness labeling for one area of life have remained largely overlooked; that area is task performance. Adults spend a substantial portion of their lives at work engaged in group-based or individual level tasks. This dissertation explores external perceptions of mental illness in task groups and the role of self-internalization of stereotypes about mental illness in individual task performance through two experimental studies.

Previous research has revealed that, on average, task partners with a mental illness are stigmatized and subject to diminished status when they are identified to participants as having been hospitalized for general psychological problems for an extended period of time. Study 1 of this dissertation explores the stigma- and status-based attributions triggered by engaging with a partner in a mutual task who is identified as having a specific mental illness label: none, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), or schizophrenia.

Additionally, research has revealed that members of a group about which negative stereotypes exist may face a situational threat in a domain relevant task--stereotype threat. Race, gender, social class, age, and a variety of other sociodemographic attributes can trigger stereotype threat. However, little research has considered the potential for stereotype threat to emerge on the basis of mental illness labeling. Study 2 of this dissertation focusing on individual-level performance, exploring the potential for ADHD to trigger stereotype threat in test-taking situations.

Results from Study 1 suggest that the specific mental illness labels studied, presented devoid of symptomatology severity, do not trigger stigmatized attributions but may trigger some negative status attributions in the case of a task relevant diagnosis. (ADHD). Study 2 suggests that a task relevant diagnosis may also trigger stereotype threat in a test-taking situation, negatively impacting performance. Taken together, the results indicate that task relevance of one's mental illness label may be a driving factor in negative external and internal perceptions of mental illness.

The stigma surrounding mental illness has been shown to have a negative impact on social relationships. However, less research has focused on the mechanisms through which the connection between stigma and relational outcomes can be explained. The primary purpose of the three studies was to evaluate the extent to which chronic and situational forms of stigma and concealment negatively predict disclosure of negative emotions, distress, and personal information through the endorsement of avoidant-oriented motives and goals. In Study 1, cross-sectional methodology was used to evaluate the role of avoidant-orientation as a mediating mechanism through which internalized stigma predicts disclosure of negative emotions and distress to friends. In Study 2, experimental methodology was used to evaluate the extent to which a situational forms of stigma salience affects endorsement of avoidant-oriented friendship goals and self-disclosure within a hypothetical friendship formation scenario. In Study 3, experimental methodology was used to test the effect of avoidant and approach-oriented friendship goals on self-disclosure within the same hypothetical friendship formation scenario. Across the studies, results did not provide evidence for the role of avoidant-orientation as a mechanism through which forms of stigma affect self-disclosure. However, results from Study 1 and Study 2 did provide evidence that concealing mental illness from friends negatively predicts self-disclosure within established and developing friendships.