2022/12/02 by Matt Geoffrey Mallinson, Anastasia Giannakopoulou, Andrew Clements · 1 voice
Psychology · #Child and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development #Mental Health Treatment and Access #Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
paper · pdf · doi:10.1007/s11469-022-00967-y
openalex publication_date 2022/12/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The American Psychological Association, among other influential bodies, make recommendations on language for describing people with mental health conditions. The present studies test the impact of the recommended language on stigma. In Study 1, participants (n = 294) were asked to complete measures of desire for social distance from individuals given a diagnostic label in either person-first possessive, identity-first noun, or identity-first adjective forms. Familiarity with the diagnoses was considered as a potential influence on the outcome. The 3*2 (linguistic form * experience) factorial design was repeated for three diagnoses - schizophrenia, anorexia and alcoholism. In Study 2, the research was replicated with a sample recruited from the UK population via social media (n = 230). Factorial ANOVA was used for analysis. In contrast with previous literature, the studies found neither an effect of linguistic form (hypothesis 1) nor an interaction effect with familiarity (hypothesis 2). Research on this topic is in an early stage and, above all, it remains important to use language, which shows respect when talking to or about others.