"That person is too vulnerable, so she has depression."
"You're pretending to be pitiful to get sympathy!"

Apart from coping with depressive and physical symptoms (e.g., pain), people with depression always have to deal with the stigma of mental illness. Stigmatization not causes psychological distress and negative emotions, but also affects their physical perception.

Previous studies have shown that mental illness stigma is associated with depressive symptoms. Pain is an important physical symptom of depression accompanied by emotional disturbance. However, it remains unclear how stigmatization directly affect the physical symptoms of depressed patients. Investigating the effect of stigmatization on physical pain would be useful in understanding its impact on the overall symptoms of depression.

Using the event reflection task (i.e., writing their past experiences in detail), a research team led by Dr. KONG Yazhuo from the Institute of Psychology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences conducted two studies to examine whether stigmatized experiences due to depression would affect patients' self-reported pain assessment (Study 1) and the perception of heat-induced pain (Study 2).

After recalling their experience of being stigmatized, depressed patients reported higher pain catastrophizing and performed increased pain perception to noxious stimuli compared to those who had no relevant experience.

The findings highlight the negative impact of stigmatization on physical symptoms of depression. It offers insights for improving clinical treatment by minimizing stigmatization to provide patients a healthy environment to seek help.

This study was published on Jan. 23 in Behaviour Research and Therapy entitled "Stigmatized experience is associated with exacerbated pain perception in depressed patients," and was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China.