Perceived Anxiety Disorder Stigma: A Predictive Analysis

Anxiety remains one of the most commonly diagnosed mental health disorders. Systemic barriers to mental health treatment persist. Research on anxiety is robust, although research on perceived anxiety disorder stigma is limited. The purpose of this quantitative analysis was to determine whether factors including age, gender, level of education, and presence of a diagnosable anxiety disorder condition would predict perceived anxiety stigma in a population of adults from the Midwestern region of the United States who were in treatment for anxiety. Based on Goffman’s framework, we used the Generalized Anxiety Stigma Scale (GASS) to determine the presence and level of anxiety disorder stigma. We evaluated data using multiple regression to predict factors that contribute to the dependent variable of perceived anxiety stigma. We found significance in the independent factors of age (<em>p</em> = 0.017), gender (<em>p</em> = 0.002), and level of education (<em>p</em> = 0.018) in the prediction of anxiety disorder stigma. This study may help the counseling profession limit the impact of perceived anxiety disorder stigma as a barrier to mental health treatment for persons with anxiety disorders who are vulnerable to this type of stigma. In this paper, we discuss the results and suggest future research.