stigma and barriers to care - Uniformed Services University of the ...

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Stigma and Barriers to Care — Caring for Those Exposed to War, Disaster and Terrorism
DR. PESCOSOLIDO: I do not think Americans have moved along with that
legislation. I do not think they watch these issues at that level of detail.
DR. BATTEN: Dr. Pescosolido, I am so glad you are not a psychiatric epidemiologist
because your perspective was really important. The data that you presented
have a feature that I hope can be discussed tomorrow, this issue of targeting public
education campaigns. I also find it interesting that helping people understand the
true neuroscience that underlies different forms of mental illness has no effect on
stigma and, in fact, may have a negative effect. These potentially well intended ways
of trying to de‐stigmatize mental illness by saying, “it is a brain disease just like any
other disease” could have negative consequences, so what should the next wave of
public education be focused on
DR. PESCOSOLIDO: This notion of moving from bad to mad, which is what
Sue Estroff is saying, may have had an effect earlier in the history of the U.S., but I
think now we have got to find another way. Jo Phelan has been doing extraordinary
work on genetic backlash because now people are saying, “This is in their genes and,
therefore, it would be in my grandson.” I think the human genome project has had
really interesting unexpected latent consequences for science and society.
DR. URSANO: The bad news is that the population is beginning to believe in
genes.
DR. THOMPSON: I am from the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS)
in SAMHSA. I have two questions that I want to ask Bernice Pescosolido. First,
did you get any sense, or is anybody at all talking about, this idea that people can
recover That there is a process by which it is possible for people to take advantage
of opportunities and become participants in society in some way that they previously
were not able to do because of the lack of opportunities
My second question is related to the research on which a PSA story may have
salience with the people. You indicated that there were some differences in age
groups. I am wondering if there are any differences by urbanicity, rurality, ethnicity,
and gender both by the people receiving the message and the people who are
described as being psychiatrically ill. I often wonder whether or not much of what
actually ends up being about mental illness is a condensation of a number of other
stigmas that get focused in a particular population and projected onto them. Do
you have any sense about corresponding prejudices that may also affect how people
understand mental illness.
DR. PESCOSOLIDO: In our study we varied the gender, the education, and the
race of the people in the vignette. We found that the results were not consistent. That
is why I said the sociodemographic factors, of either the potential stigmatizer or
the person who would potentially be stigmatized, were not very effective. I thought
it was genius to target 18 to 25 year olds, and I think the Friendster video really
hit a nerve of something that we should be following. You would not be surprised
to hear that the video game had a gendered effect with women not responding to
it at all. I think we should have different messages for people who have different
experiences with mental illness because what we are finding is this very strong social
network effect. Telecom has a theory called The Limited Capacity Processing Theory
of media effects, or something to that effect. They argue that people filter through
their own experiences, and what we are finding is a very dramatic difference between
individuals who have people with mental illness in their social networks and those
who do not.
When I saw the Friendster video I brought it up to our state government and