(PS2-D100) Gender Differences in Blame Regarding Depression and Alcohol Use Disorder

In general, people with mental health conditions are blamed to a higher degree for the acquisition of their disorder due to the perception that the condition is controllable (Ozkok et al., 2022). Previous studies have identified evidence of stigma, or blame, toward single disorders, but there remains a lack of research regarding this effect toward comorbidities. The current study assessed blame toward individuals with comorbid alcohol use disorder (AUD) and depression. For this project, we had three predictions: (1) male participants would place more blame on individuals for the acquisition of their disorder(s), (2) in the single disorder conditions, an individual with AUD would be blamed more than an individual with depression, and (3) in the comorbid conditions, more blame would be placed on the individual if they developed the AUD prior to depression.

Participants were 259 undergraduate students from a midsize private university (56% female; 72.9% White/Caucasian). Respondents were asked to complete a 46-question survey in response to a vignette. At the start of the survey, participants were randomly assigned to one of three control, or single disorder, conditions, or one of four experimental, or comorbid, conditions. The key dependent variable used to assess stigma in our study was the attribution of blame, meaning that “the student’s problems are his own fault.

An omnibus analysis of variance across the seven conditions revealed a significant difference across conditions. In line with our first prediction, men placed more blame on the student overall than women did. Women also attributed less blame, and believed the onset of the student disorders was the “student’s own fault” significantly less than men. Our second hypothesis was partially supported, however, there was a significant gender interaction. Women placed more blame on the individual in the AUD-only condition, however, men attributed more blame in the depression-only conditions. Regarding our third hypothesis, there was no main effect for diagnosis order across the comorbidity conditions. However, there was a significant interaction between the temporal order in which the student’s problems developed and the participant’s gender. Men found the individual to be more blameworthy when AUD developed before symptoms of depression. In contrast, women placed less blame on the student when the AUD presented before the depression symptoms.

Results from our study signal that the attribution of blame surrounding mental health diagnoses is complex, and even more so in the case of comorbidities. The type of disorder and the temporal order of diagnosis both have implications, but depend on a nuanced relationship between these things and gender of the participant. Previous literature has found that people may be more sympathetic toward individuals diagnosed with a gender-atypical disorder (Wirth & Bodenhausen, 2009). In the current study, gender-atypicality of the disorder may have played a role in the attribution of blame. Future research should seek to better understand how the gender-atypicality of a disorder affects levels of blame in light of single and comorbid diagnoses, and may also be impacted by the gender of the participant.