A Contagious Other? Exploring the Public’s Appraisals of Contact with ‘Mental Illness’

Daniel Walsh and Juliet Foster
Additional contact information
Daniel Walsh: Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, London SE5 8AB, UK
Juliet Foster: Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King’s College London, London SE5 8AB, UK

IJERPH, 2020, vol. 17, issue 6, 1-18

Abstract: Mental illness has recurrently been found to be Othered by the lay public, although few researchers have examined the affective and implicit processes involved. To explore this, we triangulated facial electromyography (EMG), self-reports, and individual interview data, finding participants to Other mental illness, a process that involved disgust, fear and pity. Furthermore, mental illness was considered to have the potential to permeate, posing a contagious threat. This research highlights the need to fully explore the forms of understanding, which maintain mental-health related stigma, including beliefs about contamination, and the implications this may have for the design of anti-stigma campaigns.

Keywords: public understanding of science; implicit stigma; risk perception; embodied cognition; affect; contact theory; mixed-methods; social representations; mental illness (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/6/2005/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/17/6/2005/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:17:y:2020:i:6:p:2005-:d:333919

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().