The effect of labeling of gambling disorder on negative attitudes

Abstract

Negative attitudes toward gambling disorder have a lot of undesirable effects on the patients' mental health and prevent them from fundamental human rights. Labeling is the process of specifying the name of the illness and understanding the patient in terms of their connection with the illness. The relation between labeling and negative attitudes toward gambling disorder has been investigated in the literature, but studies have not shown consistent results. In our study, we mainly focused on the roles of two mediator variables —responsibility and controllability— and also examined the effects of perceivers' past contact experiences with people with mental illness and of their gender. A total of 440 Japanese participants took part in the experiment. Half of the participants read the vignette with labeling to the target, who was diagnosed as having moderate gambling disorder, while the other half of the participants read a vignette without such labeling. We analyzed the data with Bayesian path analysis where we determined the model based on goodness of fit indices. The results suggested that labeling possibly decreases people's negative attitudes through a decrease in the extent of responsibility attributed to the target. Contact experience did not affect the attitudes and women tended to show more negative attitudes toward the target than men. Despite the limitations, the findings of the study have implications for human rights education and to reduce the negative attitudes toward gambling disorder.