Pineapple Pizza
i
hate pineapple pizza i think that
it’s disgusting in that fruit and pizza
should not be together and rightfully so
the majority of the population agrees
with me
or at least i like to think they do
however i can’t help but feel just
a little bit bad for those who truly
like
pineapple pizza being such a highly
controversial topic they probably have
to think twice before
openly expressing their love for it
because if they do
they have a chance of being ridiculed
and shamed
and as silly as this sounds this is a
perfect example
of stigma my name is kayla
and today i will be talking about the
role of gender
and mental health stigma
so what is stigma
you might hear this word and vaguely
think back to your middle school science
class and think that it’s that
long stick inside of a flower however
the stigma that i want to talk about
today is a different kind of stigma
the stigma i’m talking about is defined
as a mark of disgrace
associated with a particular
circumstance person
or quality now
this isn’t a physical mark that actually
brands certain people
it’s an unspoken thing a negative social
attitude
attached to a person or group of people
and it aims to shame them for a
perceived difference
and there are many examples of stigma in
society
there’s stigma attached to being in the
lgbtq plus
community being of a particular faith or
religion
or liking pineapple on pizza
however one of the most heavily
stigmatized
areas in society today is mental health
our society disproves mental illness
we dismiss it as a weakness or a fault
in our personalities
i’m sure we’ve all heard that people who
are depressed are lazy
and those with anxiety are cowardly
and these false stereotypes only further
skew
our perception of what mental illness
actually is
contributing to the overall
stigmatization of mental illness
it affects people struggling with mental
illnesses by influencing
who they tell when they tell and even if
they tell
additionally stereotypes surrounding
mental illnesses
are often politicized people like to
assume that
those with mental illnesses are
dangerous and violent
when according to mental health.gov only
a small minority of those mental
illnesses
actually commit violent crimes and that
in fact
they’re ten times more likely to be
victims of one
making them a vulnerable population we
need to be protecting
instead of fearing
so in order to attempt to deconstruct
this discrimination that mental illness
faces we need to attack the root of the
problem
by deconstructing mental health stigma
mental health stigma is a very broad
topic
with many groups facing disproportionate
effects
but today i will just be tackling the
role of gender and mental health stigma
so if i were to very briefly explain
gender roles i would say that
men are seen as the providers of the
family
they’re supposed to be strong
independent and
overpowering whereas women are seen as
the caretakers and belong in the kitchen
and these might seem like outdated
stereotypes
but a study conducted by the gina davis
institute on gender and media
studied ads released from 2006 to 2016.
and they found that men were four times
more likely than women
to even have a presence in ads and had
seven
times the speaking time and furthermore
women were more than fifty percent were
fifty percent
more likely than men to be shown in the
kitchen
and these gender role portrayals in
commercialization
are just one aspect in our lives gender
roles are
everywhere now they’re ingrained into
our society
in fact a study conducted by professors
at queen’s university in canada
found that because of the stereotype
that men need to be
unemotional and because we relate help
seeking
to femininity in our society then
systematically
under utilize mental health services and
disproportionately experience mental
health stigma
we can see that right now gender role
portrayals
are starting to seep into our overall
perception of how to handle mental
illness within our culture
because according to the national
institute on on mental health
and 2015 only five percent of men
reported suffering from a mental illness
this hesitancy in acknowledging a mental
illness
will only make it worse we need to
remove this stigma
we need to remove the stigma in men
where
help seeking is discouraged because if
we fail to do this
not only will their mental illnesses get
worse but it can also lead to things
like
relying on substance abuse for
self-treatment
and mental health stigma among men not
only affects the likelihood of them
seeking help
but also the support that is available
to them
one such area support are medical
professionals
according to sociology professors
practitioners are less
likely to diagnose a man with depression
than a woman
even if their presenting symptoms are
similar
in another area support that is
negatively affected
by harmful men’s gender roles are
friends
and family and this can start as early
as middle school
in a study conducted by anita chandra a
senior policy researcher at the rand
corporation
it was found that girls were more likely
than boys to
turn to a friend for an emotional
concern
and as a whole boys had less experience
and knowledge when it came to mental
health
and the key factors in perpetuating
these outcomes
were parental disapproval and perceived
stigma
so as a whole the root of the problem
with mental health stigma among men
is the unjustified roles that they’re
placed in
because they’ve always been taught by
the media
their schools families and even their
friends
that they need to be this unemotional
and stoic being
they not only fail to help themselves
when it comes to mental illnesses
but they also fail to help those around
them
so in the same way that men avoid
treating their mental illnesses
because of the femininity that is
attached to health seeking within our
society
women experience stigma around mental
health conditions that are labeled as
male dominant and aggressive like
substance abuse
although research from the national
institute of drug abuse
tells us that men are more likely to
abuse drugs than women
dr tammy anderson from the university of
illinois chicago
says that a large part of research
with drug misuse between males and
females
were conducted under assumptions based
on gender roles
prior to the 1980s men’s and women’s
drug abuse
were viewed through a male lens and what
this means
is that almost all studies involving
alcohol and drugs
were conducted among men
however as research began to progress
and we began to see
and we began to see gender role bias
taken into consideration
it was found that women also a large
majority of women
also experience drug abuse
it was found that drug misuse and abuse
were more common
among female arrestees than male
arrestees
so this idea of drug
substance misuse being male dominant
that was perpetuated by
professional research made women
struggling with substance
misuse feel less accepted and heard
but even worse these stereotypes
actually fuel addiction
in both genders research finds
that addiction is related to an
individual’s quest to integrate
opposing gender scripts masculinity and
femininity
in an attempt to achieve wholeness
dr anderson explains that due to
rigid expectations of conformity to
masculine
and feminine identities identities in
early adolescence
this is correlated to an increased risk
in developing drug related identities
especially for women
again we see women bearing most of the
weight when it comes to gender
discrimination and drug research
so besides substance misuse it might
seem like
women can’t really face any mental
health stigma
because after all when it comes to
mental illnesses
women eat up the majority of the
population
more women than men experience
depression
women are two times more likely to
experience anxiety
anxiety disorders two-thirds of people
with dementia
are women eating disorders are more
common among women
and worldwide women actually are more
affected than men by ptsd
largely because they’re more exposed to
sexual violence
so after these statistics it may sound
like you can’t really experience stigma
if you’re so over represented over
representative
in a group but however we’ll soon be
able to see that the opposite is true
in an experiment conducted by james
worth and galen bodenhausen
they decided to study the stereotype
that we were just talking about
the stereotype being that images of
dangerous mental illnesses like violent
alcoholism
are more directed at men
so in their experiment they conducted a
nationwide survey
with volunteers from all different age
groups
and these volunteers were to read a case
history
of people studying people struggling
with mental illnesses
some read about ryan a male who was
your stereotypical alcoholic and some
write about
karen a woman who was showing all the
classical symptoms of major depression
and then some volunteers read switched
around cases
where karen was the alcoholic and brian
was the one
struggling with depression and
the idea was to see if the typicality of
brian and karen’s symptoms
or lack of it shapes the volunteers
reactions
and judgments and it did exactly that
as we often see is the case with women
named karen
people showed more anger and disgust and
less sympathy towards karen who was
depressed
than towards brian who was depressed
volunteers were also less likely to help
karen who is struggling from
a typical disorder of depression
and what this means is that because the
public views depression as such a common
mental illness within women
people are much more likely to treat
depressed women
with less sympathy and acceptance than
men
the definition of mental health stigma
so
after looking at state mental health
stigma as a whole
it might seem like this whole thing is a
lose-lose situation
men are suffering from it women are
suffering from it
everybody is suffering but
one of the first steps to deconstructing
mental stigma
is just by being aware of it because
going back to
the definition in the beginning we can
see that mental stigma
is socially driven
as you walk out of here today i hope
that you’re inspired to check in on your
friends
and discouraged from dismissing
someone’s mental health status
just because of preconceived notions or
stereotypes
because it’s the little things like
these where we could become more
inclusive towards some of the most
marginalized groups in our society
this is for the men struggling with
depression
the women battling substance abuse
and finally this is for the group
fighting
one of the most terrifying battles of
all
this is for my pineapple pizza lovers
thank you