Just like someone without mental illness, only more so": Normalizing beliefs and their buffering effects on psychiatric symptoms

Abstract

Self-stigma leads sufferers of psychiatric conditions to experience reduced self-efficacy and self-esteem as well as avoid treatment, employment, and social opportunities. There is a dearth of research on the mechanisms underlying individuals' ability to resist stigmatizing beliefs; furthermore, research has revealed limitations in current popular approaches to de-stigmatization, such as emphasizing the biological and genetic characteristics of symptoms. We propose normalization-The understanding of psychiatric phenomena as varying degrees of normative, understandable, and common experiences-As a cross-diagnostic protective factor against self-stigma. We recruited a sample of 137 online study participants to pilot an assessment of normalization, predicting that normalizing beliefs about psychiatric symptoms would positively influence quality of life, especially for those who report personal experience of symptoms. We found evidence for this prediction: belief that psychiatric symptoms were relatively common, buffered the negative effect of people's own psychiatric symptoms on quality of life. Crossdiagnostic symptom normalization may function as a protective factor against the negative effects of psychiatric symptoms and associated stigma.