IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/socmed/v75y2012i6p1122-1127.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Effects of contact with treatment users on mental illness stigma: Evidence from university roommate assignments

Author

Listed:
  • Eisenberg, Daniel
  • Downs, Marilyn F.
  • Golberstein, Ezra

Abstract

Mental illness stigma refers to negative stereotypes and prejudices about people with mental illness, and is a widespread phenomenon with damaging social, psychological, and economic consequences. Despite considerable policy attention, mental illness stigma does not appear to have declined significantly in recent years. Interpersonal contact with persons with mental illness has been identified as a promising approach to reducing mental illness stigma. This study investigates the effect of contact with mental health treatment users on stigma using an observational research design that is free of self-selection bias. The research design is based on the quasi-experiment in which university students are assigned to live together as roommates. Survey data were collected from first-year undergraduates at two large universities in the United States (N = 1605). Multivariable regressions were used to estimate the effect of assignment to a roommate with a history of mental health treatment on a brief measure of stigmatizing attitudes. Contact with a treatment user caused a modest increase in stigma (standardized effect size = 0.15, p = 0.03). This effect was present among students without a prior treatment history of their own, but not among those with a prior history. The findings indicate that naturalistic contact alone does not necessarily yield a reduction in mental illness stigma. This may help explain why stigma has not declined in societies such as the United States even as treatment use has risen substantially. The findings also highlight the importance of isolating the specific components, beyond contact per se, that are necessary to reduce stigma in contact-based interventions.

Suggested Citation

  • Eisenberg, Daniel & Downs, Marilyn F. & Golberstein, Ezra, 2012. "Effects of contact with treatment users on mental illness stigma: Evidence from university roommate assignments," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 75(6), pages 1122-1127.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:6:p:1122-1127
    DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.05.007
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0277953612004200
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.socscimed.2012.05.007?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Johanne Boisjoly & Greg J. Duncan & Michael Kremer & Dan M. Levy & Jacque Eccles, 2006. "Empathy or Antipathy? The Impact of Diversity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1890-1905, December.
    2. Pescosolido, Bernice A. & Martin, Jack K. & Lang, Annie & Olafsdottir, Sigrun, 2008. "Rethinking theoretical approaches to stigma: A Framework Integrating Normative Influences on Stigma (FINIS)," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 67(3), pages 431-440, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Pullen, Erin & Ekl, Emily A. & Felix, Elizabeth & Turner, Christopher & Perry, Brea L. & Pescosolido, Bernice A., 2022. "Labeling, causal attributions, and social network ties to people with mental illness," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 293(C).
    2. Ezra Golberstein & Daniel Eisenberg & Marilyn F. Downs, 2016. "Spillover Effects in Health Service Use: Evidence From Mental Health Care Using First‐Year College Housing Assignments," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 25(1), pages 40-55, January.
    3. Gaddis, S. Michael & Ramirez, Daniel & Hernandez, Erik L., 2018. "Contextualizing public stigma: Endorsed mental health treatment stigma on college and university campuses," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 197(C), pages 183-191.
    4. Olga Yakusheva, 2017. "Health Spillovers among Hospital Patients: Evidence from Roommate Assignments," American Journal of Health Economics, MIT Press, vol. 3(1), pages 76-107, Winter.
    5. Cook, Jonathan E. & Purdie-Vaughns, Valerie & Meyer, Ilan H. & Busch, Justin T.A., 2014. "Intervening within and across levels: A multilevel approach to stigma and public health," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 101-109.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nora Gordon & Sarah Reber, 2018. "The effects of school desegregation on mixed-race births," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 31(2), pages 561-596, April.
    2. Mpho M. Pheko & Rapelang Chilisa & Shyngle K. Balogun & Christina Kgathi, 2013. "Predicting Intentions to Seek Psychological Help Among Botswana University Students," SAGE Open, , vol. 3(3), pages 21582440134, July.
    3. Aksoy, Billur & Chadd, Ian & Koh, Boon Han, 2023. "Sexual identity, gender, and anticipated discrimination in prosocial behavior," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 154(C).
    4. Yakusheva, Olga & Kapinos, Kandice & Weiss, Marianne, 2011. "Peer effects and the Freshman 15: Evidence from a natural experiment," Economics & Human Biology, Elsevier, vol. 9(2), pages 119-132, March.
    5. Leonardo Bursztyn & Thomas Chaney & Tarek Alexander & Hassan Aakaash Rao, 2022. "The Immigrant Next Door: Long-Term Contact, Generosity, and Prejudice," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03870145, HAL.
    6. Zenou, Yves & Boucher, Vincent & Tumen, Semih & Vlassopoulos, Michael & Wahba, Jackline, 2020. "Ethnic Mixing in Early Childhood: Evidence from a Randomized Field Experiment and a Structural Model," CEPR Discussion Papers 15528, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    7. Samuel Bazzi & Arya Gaduh & Alexander D. Rothenberg & Maisy Wong, 2019. "Unity in Diversity? How Intergroup Contact Can Foster Nation Building," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(11), pages 3978-4025, November.
    8. Bagues, Manuel & Roth, Christopher, 2020. "Interregional Contact and National Identity," CAGE Online Working Paper Series 526, Competitive Advantage in the Global Economy (CAGE).
    9. Nijkamp, Peter & Poot, Jacques, 2015. "Cultural Diversity: A Matter of Measurement," IZA Discussion Papers 8782, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Yann Algan & Quoc-Anh Do & Nicolò Dalvit & Alexis Le Chapelain & Yves Zenou, 2015. "How Social Networks Shape Our Beliefs: A Natural Experiment among Future French Politicians," Working Papers hal-03459820, HAL.
    11. repec:spo:wpmain:info:hdl:2441/78vacv4udu92eq3fec89svm9uv is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Gordon B Dahl & Andreas Kotsadam & Dan-Olof Rooth, 2021. "Does Integration Change Gender Attitudes? The Effect of Randomly Assigning Women to Traditionally Male Teams," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 136(2), pages 987-1030.
    13. Jonas Hjort, 2013. "Ethnic Divisions and Production in Firms," CESifo Working Paper Series 4449, CESifo.
    14. Peter Arcidiacono & Esteban M. Aucejo & Hanming Fang & Kenneth I. Spenner, 2011. "Does affirmative action lead to mismatch? A new test and evidence," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 2(3), pages 303-333, November.
    15. Jana Cahlikova, 2015. "Study Abroad Experience and Attitudes Towards Other Nationalities," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp556, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    16. Sander Hoogendoorn & Mirjam van Praag, 2012. "Ethnic Diversity and Team Performance: A Field Experiment," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 12-068/3, Tinbergen Institute, revised 01 May 2014.
    17. Dylan Glover & Amanda Pallais & William Pariente, 2017. "Discrimination as a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy: Evidence from French Grocery Stores," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 132(3), pages 1219-1260.
    18. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/78vacv4udu92eq3fec89svm9uv is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Cáceres-Delpiano, Julio & De Moragas, Antoni-Italo & Facchini, Gabriel & González, Ignacio, 2021. "Intergroup contact and nation building: Evidence from military service in Spain," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    20. G�nther Fink & Margaret McConnell & Sebastian Vollmer, 2014. "Testing for heterogeneous treatment effects in experimental data: false discovery risks and correction procedures," Journal of Development Effectiveness, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 6(1), pages 44-57, January.
    21. Thorsten Beck & Patrick Behr & Andreas Madestam, 2011. "Sex and Credit: Is There a Gender Bias in Lending?," Working Papers 411, IGIER (Innocenzo Gasparini Institute for Economic Research), Bocconi University.
    22. Leonardo Bursztyn & Thomas Chaney & Tarek Alexander Hassan & Aakash Rao, 2021. "The Immigrant Next Door: Exposure, Prejudice, and Altruism," Working Papers 2021-16, Becker Friedman Institute for Research In Economics.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:socmed:v:75:y:2012:i:6:p:1122-1127. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/journaldescription.cws_home/315/description#description .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.