Who has mental health problems? Comparing individual, social and psychiatric constructions of mental health

Purpose The persistent gap between population indicators of poor mental health and the uptake of services raises questions about similarities and differences between social and medical/psychiatric constructions. Rarely do studies have assessments from different perspectives to examine whether and how lay individuals and professionals diverge. Methods Data from the Person-to-Person Health Interview Study (P2P), a representative U.S. state sample (N ~ 2700) are used to examine the overlap and correlates of three diverse perspectives—self-reported mental health, a self/other problem recognition, and the CAT-MH™ a validated, computer adaptive test for psychopathology screening. Descriptive and multinominal logit analyses compare the presence of mental health problems across stakeholders and their association with respondents’ sociodemographic characteristics. Results Analyses reveal a set of socially constructed patterns. Two convergent patterns indicate whether there is (6.9%, The “Sick”) or is not (64.6%, The “Well”) a problem. The “Unmet Needers” (8.7%) indicates that neither respondents nor those around them recognize a problem identified by the screener. Two patterns indicate clinical need where either respondents (The “Self Deniers”, 2.9%) or others (The “Network Deniers”, 6.0%) do not. Patterns where the diagnostic indicator does not suggest a problem include The “Worried Well” (4.9%) where only the respondent does, The “Network Coerced” (4.6%) where only others do, and The “Prodromal” (1.4%) where both self and others do. Education, gender, race, and age are associated with social constructions of mental health problems. Conclusions The implications of these results hold the potential to improve our understanding of unmet need, mental health literacy, stigma, and treatment resistance.