The Impact of Stigma on Psychological Well-Being and Treatment Seeking

As an assignment for my Abnormal Psychology Analysis course, which I completed in the spring of 2019, I wrote a literature review regarding the impact of mental illness stigma on patients’ treatment-seeking behaviors and well-being. Understanding the impact of stigma is important, as I hope to be a mental illness clinician in the future. This project helped me to fully understand the wide-reaching effects that mental illness stigma has for individuals with mental illness, and the ways that the community of mental illness clinicians can work to lessen the negative effects.

This year I had the privilege of serving as an Ambassador to the Psychology Department here at Ohio State. In this role, I worked closely with the director of Undergraduate Programming in Psychology, Dr. Alisa Paulsen, and all of the advisors in the Psychology Department. Ambassadors receive professional development training, serve as course assistants in the freshmen and transfer student survey classes, plan events for the department, help greet and recruit new students to the Psychology department, and network with the professors in our classes.

This photo represents my passion for psychology and why I love the subject. There are elements of the hard sciences in psychology, and I am exploring that with my current course in Behavioral Neuroscience, and I will continue to learn about research methods and data and statistical analysis in the field in future courses. There is also an element of uniqueness and fluidity in psychology because no individual is the same, and the path that I want to go down with my career with allow me to experience the diversity in human psychology. The colorful side of the image also represents to me that there is so much to be learned about the brain, and although I want to do clinical work for my career, I want to contribute to research in the field while on my path to becoming a clinician.

Photo Citation: image. https://www.emotivebrand.com/brand-loyalty-flows-from-great-products-imbued-with-emotional-significance/. Accessed 14 Oct 2018.

This is a photo from the recent Opioid Research Panel hosted by the Biological Sciences Scholars Program. The featured speakers were Dr. William Martin who is the Dean of the College of Public Health at Ohio State, Dr. Henry Xiang who is a Professor of Epidemiology at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Dr. Thomas Huber who is an Assitant Professor in Health Services Management and Policy Change in the College of Public Health at Ohio State, and Dr. Cecilia Mengo who is an Assistant Professor in the College of Social Work. This panel was so interesting and helped me to understand the importance of research in solving problems, and the different forms that it can take. Not all research has to take place in a lab, and all different types of research can be used to solve problems. Because I want to pursue a career in mental health treatment, I find the treatment of opioid addiction very interesting, and I hope that I can contribute to solving this problem as a part of my research studies or in my clinical work in the future.