Poster Presentation

PDF (HTML version follows)

Conference

Pacific Rim International Conference on Disability

Authors

Elizabeth Kilgallon, Sophie Hoffmann, & Ashley Woodman

Background

  • Researchers have long been interested in how mental illness affects identity, but the concept of illness identity—how individuals incorporate mental illness into their self-concept—is still not well understood and under-researched.
  • Competing theories exist: one suggests that strong identification with a mental illness can harm self-esteem and recovery, while another (the “rejection identification model”) suggests it may actually buffer individuals from the effects of stigma.
  • This study focuses on college students with mental illness and explores how they incorporate their diagnosis into their identity, particularly in relation to their perceptions of stigma.

Participants

  • Students at UMass Amherst, recruited through the SONA system (extra credit in courses)
    • Pre-pandemic (Fall 2019-Spring 2020): N=13
    • During pandemic (Fall 2020-Spring 2021): N=18
    • “Post” pandemic (Fall 2023-Spring 2024): N=15
  • Demographics
    • White (76%), Asian (12%), Latinx (4%)
    • Women (72%), men (24%), other (4%)
    • LGBTQIA+ (40%), heterosexual (60%)
    • Age (M = 20.36, SD = 1.32)
  • Preliminary analyses of first cohort (N=13)
    • Identified with a range of labels (often multiple): anxiety (9), depression (6), bipolar (3), OCD (3), PTSD (2)

Methods

  • Semi-structured interviews
  • Thematic coding

Diagnosis

Start of a journey

The process of actually going and getting help, that felt so liberating in itself, like I’m doing something about it.

Okay. We knew, we suspected this. So now what?

Newfound insight

I was a little relieved because, I don’t know, I always felt like it was my fault that… I always got decent grades but I always knew that I could do better and for a while I think my parents were like, ‘why aren’t you doing better, you’re not studying, what’s going on?’ And I think this finally opened their eyes that it’s not necessarily my fault. It’s just the way that my brain works. And so I was kind of relieved that it wasn’t my fault.

Label makes communication easier

And [the diagnosis] has given me a way to kind of express what I’m thinking to people in a common language. So if I’m struggling… because I’m feeling anxious, I can explain to [my boyfriend] that that is the cause of it, and he understands that.

Identity

MI is not part of who they are

I don’t identify with my mental illness. Like someone who has asthma wouldn’t identify as an asthmatic. It’s just a condition that they have. But it’s not them.

Would be a very different person without MI

I do identify as an anxious person… it shapes a lot of how I interact in the world, whether that be like socially, or in class, or even with myself. And I think that I would be a very different person if I didn’t have anxiety. So, I consider it a pretty big part of my identity because I wouldn’t be the same.

Not the defining characteristic

I think it’s very much a part of who I am, just because I deal with it in my everyday life. So, it affects almost everything that I do, in every capacity, in every relationship I have. But it definitely… it doesn’t define me, but it is who I am.

Stigma

Stigmatized by family

My mom talked about [my grandma’s depression] a lot and how that affected her and it was always kind of a very negative thing… So I always associated depression with a very negative stigma and I didn’t know anything about anything else.

Fear of stigma

[People] saying that the reason that a shooting happens is because of a mental illness are creating a greater stigma about something that they don’t really understand or haven’t done the research on. And [they’re] implying that anybody who has a mental illness is basically stopping themselves every day from going out and committing an atrocity when that’s clearly not the case.

Combatting stigma through advocacy

I love talking about it. It’s not like it’s like a weird or private thing for me. Like whenever someone opens up to me, all I want to do is give them my insight and be like, I talked to someone, you should talk to someone, everyone should talk to someone. And I try to teach them what my therapist taught me, like different coping mechanisms.