Lay Judgments of Mental Health Treatment Options

Abstract

Background: Past research shows that people believe psychologically caused mental disorders are helped by different treatments than biologically caused mental disorders. However, it is unknown how people think about treatment when limited information is known to identify the disorder. Objective: Our objective was to explore how laypeople judged the helpfulness of treatments when a limited set of mental health symptoms is presented. Method: Across four experiments, Mechanical Turk and college undergraduate participants (N = 331) read descriptions displaying sets of three mental health symptoms and rated how helpful pharmaceuticals, counseling, or alternative medicine would be on a 0 (not at all helpful) to 100 (completely helpful) scale. We measured judgments for perceived mental and medical symptoms (Experiment 1) and how judgments were influenced by symptom severity (Experiment 2), duration (Experiment 3), and if alternative medicine and conventional treatments were used in conjunction (Experiment 4). Results: Perceived mental symptoms were rated as helped by counseling, while perceived medical symptoms were rated as helped by medication. Alternative medicine was never rated as extremely helpful. For example, in Experiment 1, counseling (mean [M] = 80.1) was rated more helpful than pharmaceuticals (M = 50.5; P < 0.001) or alternative medicine (M = 45.1; P < 0.001) for mental symptoms, and pharmaceuticals (M = 62.6) was rated more helpful than counseling (M = 36.1; P < 0.001) or alternative medicine (M = 47.5; P < 0.001) for medical symptoms. This pattern held regardless of severity, duration, or the adjunct use of alternative medicine. Limitations: We employed a general population sample and measured hypothetical treatment judgments. Conclusions: Mental health symptoms viewed as problems of the mind are thought to need different treatment than mental health symptoms seen as problems of the body.

Beneficial and detrimental effects of genetic explanations for addiction

“…Because people often tend to view the mind as separate from the physical body, genetic conceptualizations of addiction could lead to the perception that addiction resides in a person’s physiology and that treatments targeting psychological processes are therefore unlikely to be effective. Indeed, there is evidence – from research among mental-health clinicians, patients and laypeople – that biological explanations for mental disorders are seen as incompatible with psychosocial explanations and can reduce confidence in the effectiveness of non-biological treatments (Ahn, Proctor, & Flanagan, 2009; Iselin & Addis, 2003; Lebowitz & Ahn, 2014; Marsh & Romano, 2016; Miresco & Kirmayer, 2006), although research of this type focused specifically on genetic explanations of addiction is lacking.…”

Of Pandemics and Zombies: The Influence of Prior Concepts on COVID-19 Pandemic-Related Behaviors

“…How people think about a disease category can change the behaviors they engage in related to the disease [25][26][27]. For example, the categorization of a health disorder (e.g., mental versus physical illness; biologically versus psychologically based disease) dictates what treatment is seen as most appropriate for the disorder [28][29][30]. Similarly, beliefs about the causal structure of a health category (e.g., whether there is an underlying causal essence that creates the features of the category and is shared by all category members) can determine whether category members are stigmatized [31][32][33].…”

Leveraging the Multiple Lenses of Psychological Science to Inform Clinical Decision Making: Introduction to the Special Section

“…For example, can we study laypeople to understand clinical reasoning? Laypeople's mental health reasoning is in itself important to study because laypeople are often the first to try to identify psychological symptoms in themselves or their loved ones (see Marsh and De Los Reyes, in this issue, for further discussion; see also Marsh & Romano, 2016). A separate question is whether laypeople can be used as proxies for studying elements of clinicians' reasoning.…”

“…Physicians and other medical professionals need to gather information from patients, decide on a diagnosis, and construct a treatment plan. Likewise, nonprofessionals must gather symptom information from loved ones and select a treatment or health professional that can assist with medical problems (for a view on this process for laypeople, see Marsh & Romano, 2016). There is a rich tradition in the medical reasoning literature that draws from cognitive science research in categorization (e.g., Brooks, LeBlanc, & Norman, 2000; Papa & Elieson, 1993), judgment and decision making (e.g., Arkes, Wortmann, Saville, & Harkness, 1981; Chapman et al, 2012; Djulbegovic et al, 2015; Hamm & Zubialde, 1995; Li & Chapman, 2009; Mamede et al, 2010), and expertise (e.g., Boshuizen & Schmidt, 1992; Mylopoulos & Regehr, 2007; Norman, Coblentz, Brooks, & Babcook, 1992; Norman, Eva, Brooks, & Hamstra, 2006; Norman, Young, & Brooks, 2007; Patel, Groen, & Patel, 1997; Schmidt & Boshuizen, 1993).…”