Self-Stigma and the Social Interactions of Mental Health Patients

• In Event: 3262 - Current Trends in the Sociology of Emotions

Abstract

We examine the consequences of self-stigmatization for mental health patients’ everyday social interactions. Past research demonstrates that people with mental illness who self-stigmatize have much lower self-esteem, efficacy, and personal agency, leading to the likely adoption of role-identities that are at the periphery of major social institutions. We further research on self-stigma by examining the likely interactional consequences of enacting a highly stigmatized self-identity, and the affective tone of the interactions the highly self-stigmatized would likely have. Using affect control theory (ACT), we generate predictions related to the interactional consequences of self-stigmatization. We use the Indianapolis Mental Health Study and Interact, a computerized version of ACT, to generate empirically-based simulation results for patients with an affective disorder (e.g., major depression and bipolar disorder), comparing simulations where the focal actor is a person with a mental illness with either high or low self-stigma. Self-stigma dampens patients’ behavioral expression, leading the highly self-stigmatized to enact behaviors that are lower in goodness, powerfulness, and liveliness. Their corresponding emotional expressions from these types of interactions are similarly dulled. Even though these likely interactions are the most confirmatory for people with high levels of self-stigma, they lead to interactions that are behaviorally and emotionally flat or neutral. This piece has implications for the literature on the social interactional and life course challenges faced by psychiatric patients and contributes to the self-stigma literature more broadly. This work will hopefully inform future research involving the collection of non-simulation-based data on the everyday interactional experiences of people with mental health problems.

Authors

• Sarah K. Harkness, University of Iowa

• Amy Kroska, University of Oklahoma