Stigma Sentiments and Self-Meanings: Exploring the Modified Labeling Theory of Mental Illness

Abstract

We introduce “stigma sentiments” as a way to operationalize the cultural conceptions of the mentally ill. Stigma sentiments are the evaluation, potency, and activity (EPA) associated with the cultural category “a mentally ill person.” We find consistent support for the validity of the evaluation and potency components as measures of these conceptions. We also demonstrate the validity of EPA ratings of self-identities (“myself as I really am”) and reflected appraisals (“myself as others see me”) as measures of self-meaning among psychiatric patients. Then we assess hypotheses derived from the modified labeling theory of mental illness: we expect each stigma sentiment to be related positively to the corresponding dimension of self-identities and reflected appraisals among psychiatric patients but unrelated to the corresponding dimension among non-patients. We find support for 13 of the 18 components to these hypotheses. We also find three cross-dimensional results that were not anticipated. The results suggest that the cultural conceptions of the mentally ill do affect the self-meanings of individuals diagnosed with a mental disorder, although the connection is sometimes more complex than a one-to-one relationship between a stigma sentiment and its corresponding dimension of self-meaning.

Failed, not finished: A narrative approach to understanding venture failure stigmatization

“…These contexts include physical (Fife and Wright, 2000) and mental illness (Kroska and Harkness 2006;Markowitz 1998), sexual orientation (Hereck et al, 2009), and criminality (Rasmusen1996; Schnittker and John 2007). Corrigan et al (2010) identified two types of stigma: social and self-stigma.…”

The Exercise of Moral Imagination in Stigmatized Work Groups

“…Exten sive literature in sociology, psychology, and psy chiatry identifies historical social stigmas and how subgroups overcame them, in some cases in the form of social movements. Members of society have suf fered social discrimination for a broad variety of reasons, including mental illnesses and disorders (Hinshaw, 2007;Kroska and Harkness, 2006), race (Loury, 2003), religion (Khazzoom, 2003), sexual preferences (Gentry, 1987), physical disabilities (Friedman, 2004), or specific behaviors (Stuber et al, 2008), to cite only a few. Gradually the per sons affected by different stigmas and their families form groups to combat, both individually and so cially, their societal rejection.…”

Gender, status, and psychiatric labels

“…Although the first and third MLT processes have been investigated in recent studies (Kroska and Harkness, 2006Markowitz, 1998;Markowitz et al, 2011;Rosenfield, 1997;Wright et al, 2000), the second step-the increase in negative evaluation and rejection-has received little attention in recent years, particularly with studies that use a behavioral measure of rejection. Our study begins to address this gap by offering a contemporary examination of the causal link between psychiatric labels and negative evaluation and rejection.…”