Beyond Stigma: Developing and Testing a Scale of Perceived Trivialization of Mental Illness

Abstract

This dissertation serves as an initial step in expanding research on perceptions of mental illnesses to better match the reality of what those with a trivialized condition experience daily in interpersonal and mediated interactions. In order to provide a foundation from which to study this form of social bias, as well as to study the ways in which media rely on trivialization tropes when portraying mental illness, a review of pertinent stigma research was first addressed prior to the conceptualization of a trivialization concept and subsequent operationalization of a reliable, validated measure. Four studies were conducted to develop, validate, compare, and test a nuanced measure of this new concept. An exploratory factor analysis (EFA) served as the first study (N = 570) and established four factors of trivialization: symptoms as benefit, overreacting, lessened severity, and cynicism. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was then conducted to demonstrate the stability of the factor structure in a different sample (N = 505). To analyze the construct validity of the newly developed trivialization scale, a third study (N = 187) employed discriminant and convergent validity measures and compared them to the four established trivialization scales. The final study provided an empirical test of the trivialization measure in a media effects context using a 2 (type of mental illness: OCD vs. ADHD) by 2 (portrayal of symptoms in social media content: benefit vs. neutral) fully factorial, between subjects experimental design (N = 278). By providing the field with a valid and reliable measure of four different types of trivialization, researchers can now apply this measure in multiple contexts to see how varied mediums, character types, genres, and mental illnesses result in different types of perceived disease trivialization. This measure can help expand the conceptual boundaries of research on mediated portrayals of mental illnesses by reminding researchers that biased portrayals of mental illnesses are not all purely negative.