Physiological stress responses to mental illness narratives.

Abstract

As discourse around mental illness (MI) becomes more common in popular media, little is known about stress responses to such depictions. In particular, personal narratives (e.g., first-person accounts) of MI are becoming more prevalent across social media. As individuals access social media at increasing rates, understanding how these accounts may impact individuals' stress responses is important. The current study compared 15 high-salience individuals (siblings of individuals with mental illness; sibs-MI) to 19 low-salience individuals (siblings of individuals without mental illness; sibs-NMI) on skin conductance responses to four audio recordings-two neutral and two describing mental illness experiences. Although there were stimuli effects, with participants exhibiting greater skin conductance responses to the MI stimuli than the neutral stimuli, there were no significant group by stimuli interactions. However, sibs-MI had significantly lower skin conductance response (SCR) rates overall. Additionally, there was a moderate but nonsignificant effect of the type of mental illness narrative for the sibs-MI, who exhibited a higher percentage of time in SCR for the story describing a sibling's suicidal actions than for the story describing personal hospitalization due to MI. The current study provides evidence for physiological stress responses to narratives of MI, with potentially greater responses when the narrative reflects a scenario that is salient to the individual. More research is needed to determine the broad effect of depictions of MI on the population. Public Policy Relevance StatementThe finding that hearing stories of mental illness and suicidality causes stress responses in the body suggests that increased access to these stories through social and traditional media could have negative impacts on individuals. While destigmatizing mental illness and suicidality is important, simultaneous support and understanding of the individuals encountering such stories are needed.