عوامل پیش بینی کننده داغ ننگ اختلال اضطراب فراگیر

The stigma associated with mental illness can lead to a range of negative outcomes, including delaying or avoiding help seeking. Identifying the characteristics of people who are more likely to hold stigmatizing attitudes enables the development of targeted stigma reduction programs. However, no previous research has systematically examined the predictors of anxiety stigma. This study used the Generalized Anxiety Stigma Scale (GASS) to assess the predictors of personal stigma and perceived stigma associated with Generalized Anxiety Disorder. A community sample of 617 Australian adults completed a survey that included the GASS, the Depression Stigma Scale, exposure to anxiety disorders, emotional distress and a range of demographic characteristics. Linear regression models indicated that women, people with greater exposure to anxiety disorders and people reporting a previous anxiety diagnosis had lower personal stigma toward anxiety. Higher exposure to anxiety disorders and rurality were significantly associated with higher perceived anxiety stigma. Results also suggested that respondents who had only been exposed to anxiety disorders through the media tended to be no more stigmatizing than respondents who had direct contact with people with an anxiety disorder. Media campaigns may be an effective vehicle for decreasing stigmatizing views in the community.

Stigmatization of people with mental illness leads to detrimental outcomes, including delay or avoidance of help seeking and treatment non-adherence, along with indirect negative outcomes such as strained social interactions, poorer quality of life or decreased self-esteem (Link and Phelan, 2006). Identifying the characteristics that are associated with stigmatizing viewpoints may enable researchers and health professionals to target stigma reduction interventions in the community. Previous studies have examined predictors of stigma in the general population (Link et al., 2004), with studies examining stigma associated with depression (Crisp et al., 2000, Angermeyer and Matschinger, 2003, Lauber et al., 2004, Pyne et al., 2004, Griffiths et al., 2006 and Wang et al., 2007) and psychosis (Corrigan et al., 2000, Crisp et al., 2000, Angermeyer and Matschinger, 2003 and Lauber et al., 2004). Crisp et al. (2000) examined stigma toward people with a range of mental disorders, and reported that the stigma around schizophrenia, drug and alcohol disorders tended to be higher than for panic disorder, major depression and eating disorders. However, to our knowledge, there have been no systematic investigations of stigmatizing viewpoints towards people with generalized anxiety specifically and the characteristics of people who might have such viewpoints. The high prevalence, chronicity and burden of anxiety disorders (Kessler and Greenberg, 2002), particularly Generalized Anxiety Disorder, necessitates research into the predictors of anxiety stigma. Most previous community-based research has examined personal stigma (sometimes referred to as public stigma), which is concerned with the respondent's own attitudes toward a certain group of people, such as people with depression or anxiety. However, it is also important to examine perceived stigma, that is, the level of stigma that respondents perceive is held by the greater community towards a certain group of people. Other forms of stigma have also been examined, including self-stigma, which is the stigma or shame a person feels about their own condition, and stigma associated with seeking help for mental health problems. Although there have been no studies of the predictors of the stigma associated with Generalized Anxiety Disorder, there has been some investigation of the factors that are associated with the stigma associated with mental illness or depression (Lauber et al., 2004, Pyne et al., 2004, Anglin et al., 2006 and Griffiths et al., 2008). There is mixed evidence for the effects of demographic characteristics such as gender and age on mental illness stigma, (Crisp et al., 2000, Lauber et al., 2004, Pyne et al., 2004, Wang et al., 2007 and Griffiths et al., 2008), which may be attributable to the variety of stigma measures and the heterogeneity of samples. Only one study (Griffiths et al., 2008) has systematically examined a range of potential predictors of stigma and compared the predictors of personal stigma and perceived stigma using parallel stigma scales. In this study, which focused on the stigma associated with depression, differences in the pattern of predictors for personal compared to perceived stigma were found. In particular, female gender and greater exposure to depression were associated with higher perceived stigma but lower personal stigma. Having lower depression literacy or being born overseas was found to be associated with increased personal stigma alone (Griffiths et al., 2008). However, higher psychological distress predicted both higher personal and perceived stigma (Griffiths et al., 2008). The present study employed a similar approach to that described by Griffiths et al. (2008), to investigate and compare the predictors of personal and perceived stigma associated with Generalized Anxiety Disorder among members of the community. In addition, the study sought to compare the predictors of generalized anxiety stigma with the predictors of depression stigma in the same cohort. By examining whether the predictors of depression and anxiety stigma are similar, the generalizability of other depression stigma research to anxiety stigma may be assessed, while differences in predictors might be indicative of divergent public attitudes towards depression and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. Based on previous research on depression stigma (Griffiths et al., 2008), it was hypothesized that exposure to people with anxiety disorders and increased education would be associated with lower personal anxiety stigma. Similarly, previous diagnosis of anxiety and higher current anxiety symptoms were predicted to be associated with lower personal stigma but higher perceived stigma based on previous findings (Pyne et al., 2004 and Griffiths et al., 2008).