Breaking the stigma of mental disorder

Breaking the stigma of mental disorder

By Michelle Lim, Psychology, 2022

Science has thousands of years of experience with infections and has made remarkable advancements. However, mental illness is still on the same phase. Even though mental disorders have been with us for decades, they are still highly prevalent, significantly contributing to 90 percent of suicides. This can be explained by the stigma of mental illness.

Rose et. al surveyed 634 fourteen-year old school students in England. Among 44 attributes, 75 percent of students were associated by their peers with overwhelming negative judgement and emotional states: nuts, psycho, spastic, mad, loony, unpredictable. Whereas, only 9 percent described others with compassionate and empathetic words such as sad and isolated. This demonstrated that teenagers have a remarkable lack of factual knowledge about mental illness, and perhaps explained the antipathetic recognition of mental illness among young people.

Eating disorders are one of the dramatic examples. Most commonly, the theory of developing this disorder is associated with environmental factors and social theory: social media idealizing beauty in popular culture through TV, film, or printed advertisement. However, what is interesting about this particular disorder is the gender difference. Nine females to every one male suffer from this disorder in their lifetime.

Nine females to every one male suffer from [eating disorders] in their lifetime.

Klump et al. investigated the organizational (prenatal) and activational (post-natal) of the gonadal hormone on the developing nervous system. They found that there’s positive association between eating disorders and finger-length ratios of 2D:4D (index finger length divided by ring finger length). This is an indicator of circulating estradiol levels since females have one 2D:4D and male have 0.92 2D:4D on average.

The result illustrates that lower levels of prenatal testosterone exposure and high level of estradiol are associated with growing manifestation of eating disorders. This further suggests that low levels of testosterone exposure before birth in females allow their brains to respond to estrogen during puberty, when the steroid hormone activates the existing genetic program contributing to the eating disorder.

The current stigma of mental can make people feel ashamed about struggling and embarrassed to seek out help. The connection of a genetic link to mental illness postulates the significant conceptual advance of the psychiatric field, answering the question of why women are more vulnerable to the particular disease compared to men. With clear biomarker of the mental disorder, we will be able to make steps toward the cure.

BMC Health Services Research (2007). DOI: 10.1186/1472–6963–7–97

Psychological Medicine (2006). DOI: 10.1017/S0033291705006653