When people think about mental illness, they often rely on deep-seated stereotypes. A review of 17 different studies looked at how people actually rate the warmth and competence of individuals living with depression and schizophrenia. The goal was to see if these two conditions are viewed differently by the public.
The results show a clear gap in how people perceive warmth. People rated those with schizophrenia as less warm than those with depression. However, when it came to competence, people rated individuals with both conditions very similarly. This means that while the public might see both groups as capable, they hold different feelings of warmth toward them.
It is important to note that these findings come from a meta-analysis of survey data, which shows how people feel rather than how they act. Because there was a lot of variation between the different studies, these results might not be consistent across every group of people. These findings suggest that stereotypes are not stable traits of a diagnosis, but rather complex views that can vary widely.
