Illness Labels and Social Distance

The authors examine a key proposition in the modified labeling theory—that a psychiatric label increases vulnerability to negative evaluation and social rejection—using an experimental design wherein female par-ticipants interact with a female teammate over a computer. The authors also evaluate a hypothesis derived from the disease-avoidance account of disgust by examining this same process for a nonpsychiatric illness: food poisoning. In addition, they introduce a composite measure of social distance behavior that is easy to implement in a laboratory experiment. The authors find, as predicted, that women seek greater social dis-tance from teammates with a history of psychiatric or food poisoning hospitalization than they do from teammates with no hospitalization history. But, contrary to predictions, a teammate’s hospitalization his-tory does not affect participants ’ ratings of her likability. The results also do not vary significantly by psy-chiatric diagnosis (depression vs. schizophrenia), suggesting that the stigma of depression may be just as strong as the stigma of schizophrenia when information about symptoms is not available. The authors dis-cuss the implications of these findings for the modified labeling theory of mental illness and for the liter-ature on disgust and stigma. They also outline avenues for future research. Keywords stigma, labeling, discrimination Although psychiatric treatment programs can dra-matically reduce patients ’ symptoms (Link et al. 1997; Rosenfield 1997), the official labeling that accompanies this treatment can negatively affect patients. Numerous studies over the past three dec-ades suggest that when individuals are officially recognized to have a mental illness, they are placed into a cultural category (e.g., ‘‘a mentally ill per-son’’) that damages their material, social, and psy-chological well-being (Kroska and Harknes