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Personality and Mental Illness Stigma

Lekai Tao

Faculty of Behavioural Sciences, University of Yorkville

PSYC 6113 Theories of Personality

Dr. Croce

December 13, 2020

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Personality and Mental Illness Stigma

Stigma has been described as a sign of disgrace towards a person who has a

distinguishing negative characteristic or attributes such as a mental health issue, physical health

condition or disability (Caddell, 2020). Stigma towards people with mental illness still

commonly exists in our society. Many people experience considerable stigma due to mental

illness and looking for mental health services. The purpose of this pager is to explore the

relationship between personality and mental illness stigma from client’s perspective and

counsellors’ perspective.

Types of Stigma Towards Mental Illness

Yuan et al. (2018) described that there are two types of stigma towards mental illness.

Public stigma is the negative attitudes and beliefs that the general society has against people with

mental illness, which includes to fear, reject, avoid, and discriminate them. Self-stigma has been

defined as the process in which a person with mental illness become aware of the public stigma

and start to agree and internalize them to themselves about their own mental health condition.

Stigma contains three components: stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination (Yuan et al,

2018). Stereotype is defined as oversimplified characteristics that are imposed on specific group

of people. Although some people in that specific group do represent characteristics of their

stereotypes, they do not represent all the people in that group (Nittle, 2020). Remarks of racial,

culture, sexual and gender are the most common stereotypes. For example, “all Asians are good

at math, like to eat rice and drive slow” is a stereotype. There might be some or even many of

Asians that fit to these characteristics, however, they do not represent all Asians (Stereotype

Examples: 5 Common Types, n.d.). Comparing with stereotype, prejudice is a baseless opinion
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and usually negative preconception or attitude against a specific group of people without enough

thought or knowledge. Prejudice be based on several factors including sex, race, age, sexual

orientation, nationality, social status, and religion (Cherry, 2020). For instance, a person meets a

young girl the first time and assume she likes pink color and barbie doll is a typical prejudice

thought. On the other hand, discrimination is the negative behavior or actions toward to either

individual or group of people based on sex, race, age, sexual orientation, nationality, social

status, and religion. Discrimination is often the result of prejudice. If a company pays their

female employees less than their male employees for the same work they perform, that is

discrimination based on the sex gender (McLeod, 2008).

Case Study of Ming

To further explore the relationship between personality and mental illness stigma from

both client’s perspective and counsellors’ perspective, I am using Ming’s case as an example.

Background of Ming

Ming is a 30-years-old, Asian male. He is single, physically healthy, no visible disability.

Ming originally came from China and migrated to Canada to attend his master’s degree in

engineering seven years ago. Ming describes himself as a hard working, happy, sociable, and

friendly person. He admits, sometimes, he feels stressed and worries about things as job security

and career growth. For the last a few weeks, Ming has been feeling unusually sad and miserable.

He experiences significant mood swings from feeling happy for a couple days to just staying in

bed all day. Ming said his sleep pattern has also changed. He feels tired all the time but has

trouble sleeping almost every night. His appetite went away and has lost weight. He missed out

work couple times last week. This has come to the attention of his boss who is concerned about
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his poor work performance lately. In fact, it is his boss who advised him that he should see his

doctor. After Ming visited his doctor, he was diagnosed with depression and referred to seek

counselling service. Ming said he feels worthless and shamed. He has lost interest on everything

and no motivation to do anything.

Ming’s Self-Stigma

Based on how Ming described himself, we know that he is a happy person, but

sometimes feels anxious and worrisome. He might have a medium to high in neuroticism.

According to the Big Five personality test, a medium to high neurotic person tend to get stressed

easily. That stress may trigger the feeling of anxiety and depression. Also, he felt shamed about

his depression because this would give him the feeling of failing himself and his family. This

negative feeling of himself could prevent him from seeking professional help to treat his

depression and seeking support from his family, friend, and his workplace. On the other hand,

Ming originally came from China, according to Schultz and Schultz (2017), he probably tends to

score high in collectivism, low in optimism and low in tendency to seek mental health treatment.

Research study found only 8.6 percent of Asian-Americans sought mental health services

compared to 18 percent of national average (Nishi, 2012). These traits are reflected on Ming’s

thoughts and behaviour and probably lead to his self-stigma.

Counsellor’s Stigma Towards Ming

Saif, Shakhoori, Nooh and Jahrami (2019) described people with mental health issues are

often stigmatized because the lack of understanding from health care providers. Number of

research show that mental health professionals hold some form of stigma against people with

mental health conditions, because their close contact with stigmatized group, known as “stigma
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by courtesy” (Saif, Shakhoori, Nooh & Jahrami, 2019). Based on my Counsellor Attributes

profile, I scored low on introspection and self-awareness, which leads to prejudice towards Ming.

When I first received Ming’s referral, I felt reluctant to provide counselling service to him. I

noticed that he is from China, then I have prejudice towards Ming immediately. I assumed that

he may not believe in counselling or may not cooperate with me. I did not realize it is my

personal bias and stereotype against Ming, solely based on my view of the traditional Chinese

culture. Just because I am Chinese, I thought I know how Chinese people think about

counselling, so I do not believe Ming is committed. I thought he probably may not show up at all

to our sessions.

Addressing Counsellor’s Stigma

The stigma against people with mental health condition is still the main reason that

prevents people from seeking professional help for their mental illness. Clearly, there is still a lot

work to do to reduce the stigma and as counsellors, we need to take the lead and be the role

model (Rubin, 2020). The best approach for counsellors to overcome stigma is to obtain

knowledge and develop competencies. Among the 18 Core Competencies described in Collins’s

Culturally Responsive and Socially Just Counselling model (Collins, 2018), Cultural Sensitivity,

Intersectionality and Worldviews will help me better understand client’s cultural identities,

relationalities and worldview. These will help me to reduce my stigma. First, to improve my

cultural sensitivity, I need to start with the cultural self-exploration and be self-aware (Collins,

2018). This competency will help me understand my cultural identity and know my personal

bias, such as assuming Ming does not believe in counselling just because he is from a

collectivism culture. Secondly, I need to practice the intersectionality competency that will allow

me to appreciate and reflect more on the complexity of how my cultural identify interact and
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intersect with Ming’s to overcome my stigma towards him. Thirdly, I need to value the diversity

of worldviews and prioritize client’s beliefs and values over mine (Collins, 2018). When I

interact with Ming, I need to find out his beliefs and personal value, then put focus on his value

during therapy. By practicing these competencies, I will be more empathetic, non-judgemental,

and respectful towards clients. These are key factors to eliminate my stigma and develop a

desired therapeutic relationship with Ming.

Conclusion

In conclusion, the relationship between personality and mental illness stigma is that

personality traits can be one of the contributing factors to client’s self-stigma and counsellor’s

stigma towards mental health illness. It is important for counsellors to improve our competencies

to overcome stigma towards clients by practicing Collins’s core competencies in Culturally

Responsive and Socially Just Counselling model (CRSJ).

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References

Caddell. J., (2020, July 03). What Is Stigma? verywellmind. Retrieved on December 6, 2020,

from https://www.verywellmind.com/mental-illness-and-stigma-2337677

Cherry K., (2020, June 17) How People's Prejudices Develop. verywellmind. Retrieved on

December 11, 2020, from https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-prejudice-2795476

Collins, S. (2018). Embracing Cultural Responsivity and Social Justice: Re-shaping professional

identity in counselling psychology. https//counsellingconcepts.ca/

Knaak, S., Mantler, E., &; Szeto, A. (2017, March). Mental illness-related stigma in healthcare:

Barriers to access and care and evidence-based solutions. https://www.ncbi.nlm.

nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5347358/.

McLeod S. (2008). Prejudice and Discrimination. Simply Psychology. Retrieved on December

11, 2020, from https://www.simplypsychology.org/prejudice.html).

Nishi, K. (2012). Mental Health Among Asian-Americans. https://www.apa.org/pi/oema/

resources/ethnicity-health/asian-american/article-mental-health.

Nittle, N. K., (2020, January 29). What Is a Stereotype? ThoughtCo. Retrieved on December 11,

2020, from https://www.thoughtco.com/what-is-the-meaning-of-stereotype-2834956.

Rubin, M. B. (2020, March 26). The Best Way Therapists Can Decrease the Stigma of Being in

Therapy. https://www.goodtherapy.org/for-professionals/marketing/customer-

experience/article/best-way-therapists-can-decrease-stigma-of-being-in-therapy.

Saif, F. A., Shakhoori, H. A., Nooh, S., & Jahrami, H. (2019). Association between

attitudes of stigma toward mental illness and attitudes toward adoption of evidence-

based practice within health care providers in Bahrain.

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id
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=10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0225738.

Schultz, D. P., & Schultz, S. E. (2017). Theories of personality. Cengage Learning.

Stereotype Examples: 5 Common Types. (n.d.) Retrieved on December 11, 2020, from

https://examples.yourdictionary.com/stereotype-examples.html).

Xu, Z. (2019, February 22). Stigma Of Mental Illness Preventing Asian Immigrants In Seeking

Help – What It Takes To Overcome The Stigma And Find The Help They Need.

https://connectepsychology.com/en/2019/05/22/stigma-of-mental-illness-preventing-

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help-they-need/.