An Examination of Self-Stigma and Distress Intolerance in College Students Diagnosed with a Mental Illness

Indianapolis, IN

Mental health stigma can be detrimental to treatment. Self-stigma is present when an individual endorses the societal stigmas related to mental illness and questions their ability to effectively interact with the world around them. Predictors of self-stigma include poor emotional or social resiliency and maladaptive coping strategies, all of which are related to poor distress tolerance (Livingston & Boyd, 2010, Corrigan, 2004). As such, one would expect that those who perceive negative emotional experiences as intolerable would be more likely to endorse self-stigmatizing beliefs about their own mental illness. However, no previous empirical study has examined this association. Thus, the purpose of the current study was to examine the association between mental illness related self-stigma and distress intolerance. We hypothesized that those who are more intolerant of distress would be more likely to endorse self-stigmatizing attitudes. As part of a larger study, participants (N = 144) completed a battery of measures assessing distress intolerance and related constructs. Data for this study were drawn from the larger sample and included only those who reported having been diagnosed with a mental illness (N = 26). These individuals were asked to complete an additional measure of mental health stigma. Preliminary analyses in the subsample of those diagnosed with a mental illness indicated there were no statistically significant associations between distress intolerance and self-stigma. Although it cannot be concluded that no association exists between these variables based only on these analyses, this study’s findings do suggest that self-stigma may be related to other factors that influence poor coping and resiliency-related outcomes, but not distress intolerance.