Words used to describe mental illnesses and substance use disorders (addiction to alcohol and other legal and illegal drugs) can have an impact on the likelihood that individuals will seek help and the quality of the care they receive. Stigma, i.e., negative attitudes toward persons based on distinguishing characteristics may contribute in multiple ways to poorer health outcomes. An article published on July 19, 2021 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology indicates that researchers and clinicians can help reduce stigma by carefully choosing the words they use to describe mental health conditions and addictions and the patients who are affected by them. Mental illnesses and substance use disorders always have been among the most stigmatized of health conditions. Because language can shape thoughts and beliefs, scientific communication sometimes may serve as an inadvertent vector of harmful stereotypes and assumptions.
A concern is that bias among medical professionals and mental health service providers can reduce the likelihood that individuals with mental illnesses will be offered or receive appropriate treatment or be referred for specialty care. Stigma against individuals with substance use disorders has proven particularly intractable. The public continues to see these disorders as character flaws or even as deviance, contributing to a treatment-averse mindset even among some physicians and health care providers. For example, some clinicians were more likely to favor punishment (a jail sentence) versus treatment for someone when that individual was described as a “substance abuser” versus having a “substance use disorder. Instead, using scientifically accurate language and terms that centralize the experience of patients who experience psychiatric conditions and that validate their worth can positively affect how they are treated within health care and in society more generally.
Similarly, the August 2021 issue of the journal The Gerontologist includes a paper discussing how in research Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) is referred to as a pathophysiological process, regardless of whether clinical symptoms are present, whereas in the lay literature, it is understood as a form of dementia. The two different uses of the term may result in misunderstandings, especially those research framings that falsely imply that patients with AD biomarkers inevitably will develop dementia. Adoption of the research understanding of AD in clinical practice will have normative implications, e.g., it legitimizes biomarker testing in individuals without dementia as improving “diagnostic” certainty.