Description
What are the possible unintended consequences of neuroscience research on social stigma and self-stigma?
reply 1:One possible unintended consequence of neuroscience research on social stigmas is that it will make the issue more apparent than it already is. If someone has an identified social stigma and is then questioned about it, it can cause doubt in that person?s mind. If left at peace, the issue may be able to resolve itself or be subsided over?time. By opening up a person?s social stigma into neuroscience research, it causes the individual to further question their own beliefs and opinions. They may question things such as their character as a whole and how their mind is altered for a negative outcome. For example, during Britney Spears? conservatorship she was questioned about a lot of things that may have made her go mentally insane. The research that her team was trying to do to grow her fame and money may have ultimately led to her downfall. The prying that they were doing to Spears and her personal life was far out of her comfort zone, as the media later found out. This slight adaptation of neuroscience research that was being pressed onto Spears could have been the reason for her triumphant escape out of her conservatorship.
A possible unintended consequence of neuroscience research on self-stigmas is that it can give mentally ill people an illusion that there is an issue out of their control. Having an internalized issue can be made worse by opening up a question of why the issue is so bad. Neuroscience research on a person with recognizable self-stigmas can cause that individual to further question their own sanity. The burden that is put on mental illness is already a toll in and of itself, but by researching further into the issue, it can cause an individual to question their true motivation or lack thereof even further.
Reply2:Neuroimaging has the potential to have negative consequences on one?s view of themselves if they believe that their cognitive functioning is inferior to anothers or that they are deficient in certain aspects. A self stigma is, by definition, when people internalize public attitudes about themselves and experience negative feelings as a result. Brain activity differs from person to person so to compare the results of one individual?s neuroimaging to another can be detrimental.
Conversely, results from neuroimaging can ease a patient?s mind that there?is?actually something abnormal happening in their brain, that they are not ?making up symptoms? and that there is not something innately wrong. Before neuroimaging, there was a large stigma around epilepsy. People thought that those with epilepsy were just crazy people and some thought they were possessed by evil spirits. When epileptic patients were hooked up to EEG the results showed that epilepsy was a disorder caused by abnormalities in the brain and there were available treatment options. The use of neuroimaging destigmatized epilepsy in the modern age.
Similarly, when neuroimaging results are compared in group settings people may experience discrimination and feelings of shame. Neuroimaging can be used to destigmatize common mental illnesses, showing that these disorders are not imaginary and there is objective evidence for them.
