The Effect of a Peer-Based Personal Stories Intervention on Focus of Anxiety and Social Distance Towards People With Mental Illness

According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness (2016), close to 75% of mental health conditions emerge by age 24, so many college students are facing mental health concerns for the first time, and may not know where to go for support. It is important that college students with mental illness do not feel alienated or fear seeking help because of personal stigma (Eisenberg, Downs, Golberstein, & Zivin, 2009). Due to the increased prevalence of mental health issues in our society, there is extensive research on stigma reduction towards mental illnesses, as well as social distance, which refers to people’s willingness to participate in social contacts of varying degrees of closeness with individuals who are mentally ill (Lamberti et al., 2001; van ’t Veer, Kraan, Drosseart, & Modde, 2006; Dietrich et al., 2004). Research on stigma reduction should target dispelling stereotypical beliefs of dangerous behaviors and focus on contact with the mentally ill rather than biological causes (Schomerus et al., 2012). The nature of discrimination against the mentally ill is still unclear and there is little research on intergroup interactions between college students and the mentally ill.

Greenland, Xenias, and Maio’s (2012) revised model of integrated threat theory (Stephan, W. & Stephan, C., 2000) provides a useful framework to understanding the factors related to mental illness and stigma on a college campus. Greenland et al. divided intergroup anxiety into two domains: self-anxiety or other-anxiety. Intergroup anxiety can be conceptualized as the nervousness that individuals feel as they interact with a member of an out-group, or a group that is different from the one they belong in. Self-anxiety is when someone worries about behaving in a prejudiced way in an interaction with another person, while other-anxiety is when someone worries that another person would act inappropriately against them. The research literature on self-anxiety and other-anxiety is common in studies regarding ethnic minorities, but is scarce in relation to people with mental illness. Other variables that are useful in examining the attitudes towards the mentally ill are social distance and quality of contact. Ideally, stigma reduction efforts set forth to reduce social distance so that people will approach the mentally ill and more readily integrate them into the community. Research shows conflicting reports on the relationship between familiarity and social distance towards the mentally ill (Anagnostopoulos & Hantzi, 2011; Corrigan, Green, Lundin, Kubiak, & Penn, 2001; Liederman et al., 2011). Stephan et al. (2002) found that quality of interethnic contact between majority and minority group members has a major influence on perceived threat. The successful manipulation of quality of contact in an experimental setting could yield favorable consequences, as many antistigma programs aim to show, in using personal stories as an intervention.

THIS STUDY

We examined the impact of a peer-based personal stories intervention on intergroup anxiety (i.e., self-focused and other-focused anxiety) and social distance. We hypothesized that the college students who attend the personal stories program (intervention group) will have significantly reduced anxiety overall and reduced social distance towards the mentally ill, as opposed to the students who had only watched a documentary on eating disorders (control group). Also, we predicted that the anxiety about interacting with a mentally ill individual is more rooted in other-focused rather than self-focused anxiety, so we targeted other-focused anxiety during interventions. Moreover, we predicted that other-focused anxiety is closely related to social distance, whereas self-anxiety is not. Finally, we hypothesized that the personal stories program has at least a stable impact on the students’ attitudes while the film of eating disorders does not.

METHOD

Participants

We recruited 56 participants from an audience of undergraduate students who had attended the CAPS Peer Educators Mental Health Awareness Month events at a medium-sized liberal arts college. Because 10 students had opted not to continue beyond the second survey, the following demographics describe only the remaining students who made up the total sample (N = 46, 80% female). This was not representative of the...