Psychological distance reduces the effect of internalized stigma on mental health treatment decisions

Although stigma is a major barrier to treatment for those with mental health concerns, it is poorly understood when stigma is more or less influential in mental health treatment decisions. In the current work, we examined whether psychological distance - the removal of an event from direct experience - reduced the influence of internalized stigma on willingness to seek treatment. Specifically, we tested the hypothesis that psychological distance versus proximity (e.g., seeking treatment in three months vs. in two days, respectively) decreases the negative influence of stigma on willingness to seek treatment. We focused on a population for whom mental health treatment decisions are personally-relevant: individuals who had previously sought mental health treatment. Experiment 1 showed that the extent to which these individuals internalized (i.e., personally endorsed) stigma about mental illness predicted lower intentions to make an appointment with a mental health care provider for themselves (but not another person). Experiment 2 replicated this result using a different measure of psychological distance (temporal distance) and extended this finding to behavior (time spent reading mental health resources). Overall, this research demonstrated that internalized stigma disrupts mental health treatment-seeking intentions and behaviors when they are psychologically proximal, but not when they are distant. Potential applications of these results are discussed.