Social Stigma Towards People with Medically Unexplained Symptoms: the Somatic Symptom Disorder, 2020, Aydogmus

[Andy]

The majority of previous studies on mental health stigma have focused on medically explained symptoms and the studies on medically unexplained symptoms (MUS) have only assessed the consequences of internalized stigma. A new category in DSM 5, named as somatic symptom disorder (SSD), includes multiple somatic disorders with medically-explained or -unexplained somatic symptoms.

This study aimed to test the effects of social stigma on people with SSD with MUS depending on the attribution model. In a class environment, 348 college students from different regions in Turkey were presented with a vignette on a person with SSD with MUS and asked to complete a survey including demographics and attitudes towards that person. Along the same lines with previous findings for other mental disorders, the path analysis using AMOS revealed that stigma-related cognitions (i.e., dependency, dangerousness and responsibility) shaped people’s affective (i.e., anger and pity) and behavioral responses (i.e., social distance) to these people. The most important predictor of social distance was pity and the level of contact was not related to social distance.

In conclusion, anti-stigma interventions towards SSD with MUS should involve building empathy towards these patients and educating people about this disorder contrary to the recommended interventions for other mental health disorders stressing the importance of contact.

Paywall, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11126-019-09704-6
Sci hub, https://sci-hub.se/10.1007/s11126-019-09704-6

 

[Esther12]

Thanks Andy. I've not read the paper yet, but wanted to see how they described people with 'MUS' to students.

This is the vignette they used:

35-year-old Mrs. Ayşe has suffered from severe headache, stomachache, joint pain and insomnia for more than 6 months. Because of her health problems, she could neither do daily chores nor keep a job for a long time. Despite of several medical tests and assessments by several doctors at different hospitals, no medical explanation could be found for her symptoms.However, Mrs. Ayşe has believed that these symptoms were resulted from a severe and fatal disorder such as a tumor in her brain. These excessive thoughts have kept her worried constantly and made her spend hours on the Internet reading about diagnoses.

I'm not sure that any anti-stigma campaign is likely to lead to students embracing those with 'MUS'/'SSD' when they are being portrayed like that.

 

[JemPD]

Thanks Andy. I've not read the paper yet, but wanted to see how they described people with 'MUS' to students.

This is the vignette they used:



I'm not sure that any anti-stigma campaign is likely to lead to students embracing those with 'MUS'/'SSD' when they are being portrayed like that.

The most effective anti stigma campaign would be for them to stop describing people in this way, well for them to stop describing people full stop. If those who are creating the stigma packed up & went home it would eventually fade away. The perversity of people whose views create the stigma in the first place researching ways to beat the stigma.... It feels somehow Orwellian to me.

 

[rvallee]

There is no social stigma against MUS. MUS is not a real category of things, it's not something the general public is aware and it doesn't represent anything specific.

There is however strong medical stigma and it is 100% caused, created, perpetuated and reinforced my medical professionals and institutions, mostly through the very concepts that cause stigma like calling them mental illness when they have nothing to do with.

People don't make fun of sick people for no reason. They do when it is acceptable by the medical profession causing and perpetuating it. Autism is a good example, it used to have a strong social stigma, then medicine matured a bit, stopped labeling it a mental illness that people grew out of and the stigma is slowly withering away. It is not gone, precisely because it came directly from medicine itself, which carries a lot of weight, and that fact lies in large part for having "moved on" without acknowledging the mistakes of the past. This is what happens when no accountability exists.

This is 100% medicine's fault. No one else is to blame for this. Medicine is not a passive observer or passive participant in this, it is the only active contributor to it. The inability to recognize it means any "anti-stigma" efforts will fail, as long as the much larger pro-stigma dogma remains in practice, especially as it is currently expanding deep into coo-coo land.

The abstract is a good example of it. It speaks of empathy, which medicine systematically rejects with us in practice, never listening to the substance of what we say and always substituting it for ideological nonsense like somatic syndromes and the like. It encourages others to practice empathy while refusing categorically to do so. Completely clueless.

The initial "sin" of this is to misrepresent reality. This is all on medicine and no one else is to blame, no one else can even do anything as long as this remains the current paradigm. Medicine has decided to blame us for their own failure, this pathetic attempt at blaming others for it is a great example of why the stigma exists in the first place, those responsible for it, for both creating and removing it, do not understand they are themselves fully responsible, and thus unable to stop it.

Grow the F up and clean your own house before you start criticizing others for adding onto your own gigantic trash pile.