Framing Eating Disorders As "Brain Diseases" Might Lead to More Stigma

Many–myself included–assume that emphasizing the biological basis of mental disorders will reduce mental health stigma. The idea is that it will place less blame and personal responsibility on the affected individual.

Still, when it comes to raising awareness and reducing stigma, we need to make sure that our assumptions hold up to the evidence, otherwise we run the risk of playing a game of broken telephone. Given that this is Eating Disorder Awareness Week in the United States, the topic is particularly timely. Those of us involved in some aspect of mental health awareness don’t want to be saying “x” only to have be interpreted as “y.”

So, the question is–does a biological or genetic framing of eating  disorders lead individuals to hold more positive views of eating disorder sufferers and place less blame on “weak will”?

This is precisely what Matthias Angermeyer and colleagues asked almost 1,350 individuals … Continue reading →

Can Socioeconomic Status Predict Mental Health Literacy?

Is there an association between socioeconomic status (SES) and mental health literacy? Can we predict the extent of an individual’s knowledge about mental disorders based on how much money they make, how much education they’ve received, or how far up the career ladder they’ve climbed?

That is the question that Olaf von dem Knesebeck and colleagues attempted to answer in a paper published recently in the journal Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. 

The authors interviewed 2,014 men and women, residents of two German cities Hamburg and Munich, using a telephone survey. The split is roughly 50/50 between men and women respondents and the mean age was 47.5. The authors presented each interviewee with two vignettes out of three (one on depression, one on schizophrenia, and one on eating disorders).

The gender in the depression and schizophrenia vignettes was varied 50/50 between male and female patients, but all vignettes about eating … Continue reading →