Abstract:
People with mental illness cope not only with symptoms but also with stigmatization.
Prior between-subjects, cross-sectional research has shown that perceived stigmatization is
correlated with poor psychosocial functioning. However, little is known about the direction
of causality between these variables or the extent to which their association reflects effects
at the within-person level, between-person level, or both levels. The literature has also
overlooked stigmatization in disorders other than schizophrenia, as well as the day-to-day
experience of stigma. The purpose of the study was to examine bidirectional relationships
between aspects of stigma (self-stigma, perceived public stigma, and severity of stigma experiences)
and psychosocial functioning (anxiety and depression symptoms, impairment due to
mental illness, interpersonal self-esteem), separate these relations into within- and between-persons
components, and examine day-to-day and lifetime stigmatization experiences in a
sample with more varied disorders. Participants were 112 community members with mental
illness recruited nationwide from mental health advocacy organizations to complete daily
diary surveys for a week. Of these adults, 96 provided sufficient amounts of data for inclusion
in the main analyses. The within-person relationship between daily stigmatization
and psychosocial functioning appears to be mostly unidirectional: self-stigma and
perceived public stigma predicted next day psychosocial functioning variables, except depression
symptoms; the only psychosocial functioning variable to predict a next day stigma
variable was anxiety symptoms, which predicted next day perceived public stigma. Most
of the relationship between stigma and psychosocial functioning was explained by within-person
processes. For example, when an individual was experiencing high levels of perceived
public stigma and self-stigma relative to his or her own typical levels, the individual also
tended to report more severe depression and anxiety symptoms, more impairment, and
worse self-esteem. At the between-person level, such relations were only found with self-stigma.
Because most participants were Caucasian, highly educated females with mood
disorders, the results may not be generalizable to the overall population of people with
mental illness. Nonetheless, this study is among the first to investigate day-to-day stigmatization
experiences and bidirectional relationships between stigmatization and psychosocial
functioning.
