Stigmatization

What is mental health stigma?

Mental health stigma can be divided into two types. There is Social stigma and self stigma.

Social stigma is when someone has an extreme disapproval of a person or group on socially characteristic grounds that are perceived, and serve to distinguish them, from other members of a society.  Self stigma is the internalizing by the mental health sufferer of their perceptions of discrimination, and perceived stigma can significantly affect feelings of shame and later lead to poorer treatment outcomes.

 What factors cause stigma?

First, the medical model implies that mental health problems are on the same level as physical illnesses and may result from medical or physical dysfunction in some way. This by itself implies that people with mental health problems are in some way “different” from “normally” functioning individuals. Secondly, the medical model implies diagnosis, and diagnosis implies a label that is applied to a “patient”. That label may well be associated with undesirable attributes, and this again will perpetuate the view that people with mental health problems are different and should be treated with caution.

Why does stigma matter?

Stigma involve prejudicial attitudes and discriminating behavior towards individuals with mental health problems, and the social effects of this include exclusion, poor social support, poorer subjective quality of life, and low self-esteem. As well as it’s affect on the quality of daily living, stigma also has a detrimental effect on treatment outcomes, and so hinders efficient and effective recovery from mental health problems. In particular, self-stigma is correlated with poorer vocational outcomes and increased social isolation. These factors alone represent significant reasons for attempting to eradicate mental health stigma and ensure that social inclusion is facilitated and recovery can be efficiently achieved.

 Who holds stigmatizing beliefs about mental health problems?

Many people hold stigmatizing beliefs about mental health problems. Both people who know someone with a mental health problem and people that don’t, have stigmatizing beliefs. Moses (2010) discovered that adolescents with mental health problems were mostly stigmatized by peers, teachers, and even family members.

Normality vs. Abnormality

          Normality and abnormality can be difficult to really understand and differentiate. But what is Normality and abnormality? Normality is applied to behavior that is considered normal, standard and regular in individuals or for a society as a whole. Abnormality is the opposite of Normality. Abnormality is unusual behavioral patterns, emotions and thoughts. This kind of behavior is more often than not, linked with mental disorders.

Defining abnormality, and what abnormal behavior really is in psychology, is very difficult. Because to define what is abnormal, you have to know what normal behavior is. Normal behavior varies all over the globe. In a south-american tribe full facial tattoos are completely normal, but in Europe a full facial tattoo would be looked upon as abnormal, and as something that is wrong. Walking around naked, without clothes is a normal thing amongst some south-american tribes, but in the more modern and civilized parts of the world you would probably be looked at as crazy and people would look at you and think that somehow you managed to escape a high security hospital. In other words, people will stare at you, and they will talk about you. The reason for this is most likely due to social and cultural variation amongst people.

It is quite difficult to determine what normal behavior, thoughts and emotions really are. Normality would be the kind of behavior that is expected from you in different situations. For example: A family member just died, so you stay at home and keep to yourself and don’t talk much. Since a family member recently passed away this is a kind of behavior that would be expected from you. But if you suddenly behave in the same way where you stay at home and keep to yourself and don’t talk much, but you don’t have an obvious reason for it, then people will start questioning it as they see it as abnormal behavior.

         

As mentioned the culture and situation is something that has a big impact on your behavior, as the situation and culture are major determinants of appropriate and normal behavior in a given situation. So we must assume that in every situation there is an expected behavior. Violations of the expected behavior or social norms that are based on culture and situation, will lead to people believing something is wrong with you as they think of your behavior as abnormal.

The Halo Effect

The halo effect can be explained as a type of cognitive bias we create from the overall impression of a person, it influences how we think or feel about the person’s character. The overall impression of a person impacts the evaluation and thoughts you have about a specific person’s traits. For example a celebrity is likable, good looking and successful. So you might also see them as funny, smart and nice.

This was discovered in a study performed by Thorndike. He asked two commanding officers to evaluate their soldiers in terms of their physical qualities (neatness, voice, physique, bearing, and energy), intellect, leadership skills and personal qualities (dependability, loyalty, responsibility, selflessness, cooperation. The goal of the study was to see how the ratings of one characteristic affected other characteristics.

 The study showed that there was too great correlation in the commanding officers responses. The rating of one of the qualities of a soldier often set a trend for the rest of the rating. If a soldier had a specific negative attribute it would correlate with the rest of the soldiers result.  

Aggression in TV Shows and Their Relation to Violence in Young Adults

Conducted by: Psychologists L Rowell Huesmann and Jessica Moise-Titus, Cheryl Lynn Podolski, Leonard D. Eron

Aim of the study: To show if Children's viewing of violent TV shows, their identification with aggressive same-sex TV characters, and their perceptions that TV violence is realistic are all linked to later aggression as young adults, for both males and females.

Participants:  557 people. At the start of the experiment they were 6-10 years old. In the second part of the experiment participants were around 20

Results: The participants, who watched High violent TV-shows and connected with the characters from the TV-show, had a higher number of instances where aggression was showed, such as; committing crimes or using physical violence later on.

Conclusion: Children that were exposed to High Violence TV-shows were more likely to show aggressive behavior as an adult than the ones exposed to non-violent TV-shows

Punishment and why it doesn't work

There are two types of punishment, negative and positive punishment. Negative punishment is when a stimulus is removed, something is taken away. For example, when a child is misbehaving the parents try to get rid of the bad behavior by taking away something that matters for the child, like taking away their computer, phone, TV, toys or freedom. They do this in the hope that their child will start behaving. Positive punishment is the addition or presence of a stimulus. For example, when a child is misbehaving the parents tries to get rid of the bad behavior by giving the child something instead of the removal of something. This could be spanking the child when misbehaving.

Punishment has shown that it does not work to change behavioral patterns. If a child does something bad and the parents punish them by spanking, the only thing that comes out of it is that the child learns to not show that kind of behavior in the presence of the parents. As soon as the child thinks they’re not being watched by their parents, the behavior resets and they start doing it again. The same goes for negative punishment, the child will continue the behavior as soon as they think they’re not being watched they continue the “bad” behavior.

If someone is exposed to punishment over longer time, they will get used to it, acclimated and they will stop responding to it. Punishment does not work over time, but it can seem to be a temporarily fix to a problem.

How a Nazi saved Sigmund Freud

At the end of October 1945, at Harry Freud's insistence, Sauerwald was arrested and the police started to investigate every aspect of his past. As soon as he was appointed Truehandler to the Freud family, on March 15 1938, Sauerwald controlled not only their assets but in effect their destiny. Freud wrote to his friend Arnold Zweig: "The people in their worship of antisemitism are entirely at one with their brothers in the Reich." A man held a pistol to Freud's son's head. 'Why not shoot him,' he shouted Freud had to cope with the Anschluss in terrible physical pain.

Sauerwald examined the records of the Freud family and of the Verlag; he read the letters people had sent to all members of the family. There is a note appended to the court proceedings after the war that Sauerwald had estimated Freud's worth at between 2 and 3 million schillings, a considerable fortune. After having read Freud's books, Sauerwald did not disclose to his superiors that Freud had many secret bank accounts abroad. Instead, he took the evidence back to his own apartment, where he had a locked box for important documents. Persuading Freud Ironically, Freud only agreed to try to leave Vienna after Anna, his beloved daughter, had been arrested by the Gestapo.

As he wondered whether or not to sign the papers for Freud's exit visa, Sauerwald got a new order from Berlin. Sauerwald finally signed the papers saying that there was no impediment to Freud leaving. Max Schur said that no one could understand why Sauerwald had saved the Freuds and thought that reading Freud's books had changed Sauerwald's attitude. Freud's brother, Alexander, met Sauerwald and asked him directly what his motives had been. And Sauerwald said “The Führer of course knows best and realises that the Fatherland is in a state of siege. The Jews, due to their internationalist leanings and their tendency towards individualistic behaviour, cannot form a reliable element of the population. Thus they have to be eliminated. This does not mean, however, that an individual should not be permitted to alleviate individual hardship in selected cases.”

As for Sauerwald, he was finally released after Anna Freud wrote to say that he had indeed helped the family but by then he had spent 18 months in detention.

Abu Ghraib

After the US and Iraq forces took over the Abu Ghraib Prison in Iraq, American soldiers were set to run the prison. The soldiers abused prisoners, both sexually and mentally. They made inmates do painful postures, they performed religious humiliation and prolonged sleep deprivation. These techniques were used to soften up valuable inmates for interrogation.

The question is, why did the soldiers do this, seemingly normal people abused and harassed other human beings, why? It is believed that the reason might be because of what is known as conformity. Conformity can be explained as “the act of matching attitudes, beliefs and behaviors to group norms”. But what is of more relevance is the Deviations of Conformity. It can be divided into Informational influence, normative influence and Referent Informational influence.

 Informational influence is when we modify our attitudes to fit others that we think or believe have information we are lacking, believing they are correct. In the Abu Ghraib prison, soldiers might have conformed after one of the soldiers decided to do something, and the others believed that this one soldier had information they were lacking.

Normative influence is when we have the urge to be liked, and we alter our behavior to what they expect, even though it might not be right. In the Abu Ghraib prison, the fact that they were soldiers can have affected them by being biased towards what soldiers should be. Rough, tough and violent, so to make others like them and not be an outsider they conformed to be what was thought the other soldiers expected them to be

Referent informational influence is that we conform in response to our group, as we have a sense of belongingness to maintain our desired social identities. In the Abu Ghraib prison the soldiers wanted to stay together as a group, so they didn’t protest on the torture of inmates as that might make them an outsider that is not part of the “in-group”, even though what they did was wrong and unethical they still conformed and stayed in the “in-group”.

Even though the actions of the soldiers can be explained as conformity, it didn’t give them right or make it ok to abuse the inmates in Abu Ghraib prison.