The Effect of Gender Roles and Priming on Mental Health Self-Stigma and Attitudes

Prior research suggests that gender roles and gender are both related to mental health self-stigma and attitudes toward help seeking. In the present study, I explored whether espousal of gender roles and priming people with mental health stigma would interact to predict levels of mental health self-stigma and attitudes toward help-seeking. I also tested whether gender moderated this relationship. Some participants were primed with fake Twitter posts that promoted mental health stigma, while others were exposed to neutral Tweets. All participants then responded to questionnaires assessing espousal of gender roles, levels of mental health self-stigma, attitudes toward help-seeking, and gender identity. Results indicated that the prime increased mental health self-stigma among men. Among women, the prime increased mental health self-stigma for low gender role espousal-participants, but there was no such effect among high-espousal participants. I found a similar result for attitudes toward help-seeking, although this effect did not reach traditional levels of significance. My findings suggest that people are highly sensitive to discussion of mental health stigma. This means that, as a result of having a conversation with a friend who emphasizes mental health stigma, someone’s mental health self-stigma might increase and their attitudes toward help-seeking could become more negative.