Previous Mental Illness Diagnoses Predict Perceptions of Current Mental Illness: A Cultural and Gender Differences Analysis of the United States and India

摘要

The disparities in mental health care around the world have led to differences in the way mental illness is treated, diagnosed, and stigmatized. The studies conducted revealed in this article investigated differences between the United States and India in terms of their willingness to agree with a possible mental illness diagnosis. Each study was conducted online using FluidSurveys?. Participants were recruited via Amazon's? Mechanical Turk? (MTurk), which is a website that provides access to an online, highly diverse participant pool. For Study 1, we hypothesized that there would be significant differences in agreement rates between the two countries and that there would be a positive relationship between agreement rates and the number of previous diagnoses. The three main hypotheses for Study 2 were that there would be a significant difference in agreement rates for the United States and India, the gender of the target individual would have a main effect, and the gender of the participant would have a main effect. The first study was focused on how the number of previous diagnoses would affect agreement rates and how that effect differed between the two countries. The second study looked specifically at how the gender of the participant as well as the gender of the target individual would affect agreement rates. Study 1 yielded significant differences between the United States and India for agreement rates when no previous diagnosis was presented. There was also evidence that as the number of previous diagnoses went from zero, to three, to five, agreement rates also increased. Study 2 also yielded significant differences between the two countries. There was a main effect of participant gender on agreement rates, but no main effect found for target gender.