ATTITUDES TOWARD MENTAL HEALTH 3 Mental Health Stigma in a Politically Polarized United States Mental health

This research examines the relationship between political views and mental health stigma. Though past research has examined the framing of mental illness and the predictive ability of political party affiliation in regard to mental health stigma separately, the current research seeks to combine the two in order to create a broader understanding of the connections between attitudes toward mental health and political affiliation and ideology. Two-hundred-and-fifty-one participants from the mid-Atlantic were randomly assigned to one of five groups: a control group answered a questionnaire with no vignette; experimental groups were presented with the questionnaire and one of the following vignettes: information about someone with treated depression, information about someone with untreated depression, information about someone with untreated heroin addiction, or information about someone with treated heroin addiction. Several ANOVAs revealed partial support for the hypotheses regarding political affiliation and mental health, framing effects, and gender. T-tests indicated partial support for hypotheses regarding experience with mental health and mental health stigma.