Are mental illnesses stigmatized for the same reasons? Identifying the stigma-related beliefs underlying common...

Although mental health stigmatization has myriad pernicious consequences, it remains unknown whether mental disorders are stigmatized for the same reasons.

This study identified the stigma-related beliefs that were associated with several common mental illnesses (Study 1), and the extent to which those beliefs predicted stigmatization (Study 2).

In Study 1, we used multidimensional scaling to identify the stigma-related beliefs attributed to nine common mental disorders (e.g. depression, schizophrenia). Study 2 explored whether beliefs commonly associated with depression predicted its stigmatization.

In Study 1, we found that the nine mental illnesses differed from each other on two dimensions: social desirability and controllability. In Study 2, we found that regardless of participants' own depression status, their perceptions that depression is controllable predicted depression-related stigmatization.

Our results suggest that stigmatization toward different mental illnesses stem from combinations of different stigmatized beliefs.