Double Disadvantage? Mental Illness Labeling and Public Stigma toward Sexual and Gender Minorities

• In Event: Sociology of Mental Health Section Open Call Paper Session

Abstract

Over 50 million adults each year in the U.S. contend with mental health issues, many of whom experience social devaluation and exclusion processes as a result of receiving a mental illness label. Given the consequences of public stigma, scholars continue to examine who is most at risk of experiencing it and why it persists. The following study employs a mental health-related vignette survey experiment to elucidate if and how sexual and gender minority (SGM) status shapes mental illness labelling and stigma processes. Examining sexual and gender minorities is especially relevant given (1) psychiatry’s historical role in medicalizing SGM identity and (2) given that SGMs are disproportionately likely to contend with mental illness, largely due to minority stressors (e.g., familial rejection and discrimination). While SGM-based discrimination increases the likelihood of experiencing poor mental health, and in turn becoming a potential stigma target, the effect of SGM status on mental illness stigma remains underexplored. This study examines if negative cultural stereotypes of SGM intersect with negative mental illness stereotypes—such that SGMs with mental illness are especially likely to face stigma. Findings suggest that conservative respondents medicalize gender minorities: they are more likely to label gender minorities as having a mental illness (i.e., even when they exhibit no diagnosable mental illness symptoms) and endorse stigmatizing, moral causal attributions (i.e., bad character) in response to gender minorities. While conservatives do not medicalize sexual minorities to the same extent, both sexual and gender minorities displaying mental illness symptoms are at greater risk of facing mental illness stigma compared to their cis, straight counterparts with similar mental illness symptoms. Taken together, these findings advance the study of marginalized groups and mental health, as well as shed light on the intersectional stigma that sexual and gender minorities experience.

Author

• Elizabeth Felix, University of Kansas