Somatized or stigma? Causal attributions and emotional responses in shaping social distance towards people with mental illness, China

Mental illness in China has traditionally been attributed to physical factors and somatization tendencies, which seldom result in stigma. How has this perception changed after decades of social change? Based on the Chinese General Social Survey database in 2011, this study constructed a structural equation model to analyze the effects of causal attribution and emotional responses on social distance. The causal attributions include dangerousness, controllability, and responsibility. And the emotional responses encompass negative affect, traditional prejudice, treatment carryover, and exclusionary sentiments. In addition, higher scores indicating greater social distance, whereas a low score reflected stronger emotional responses or a greater degree of internal attribution. The results reported a high level of social distance towards people with mental illness. These findings indicated that emotional responses have a direct impact on social distance. Specifically, when negative affect, traditional prejudice, and exclusionary sentiments increase by one standard deviation, the social distance decreases by 0.497, 0.178, and 0.073 standard deviation, respectively. Conversely, as the level of treatment carryover rises, social distance increases by 0.087. Meanwhile, the causal attribution only exerts a significant indirect effect on social distance by the function of emotional causal responses. The results indicated that the public attributes mental illnesses like depression primarily to psychological issues rather than somatic ones. It suggested widespread stereotypes and public stigma towards people with mental illness in China, as well as an arduous task in anti-stigma. In addition, a targeted way to address public stigma lies in changing the stereotype of people with mental illness.