Mental Illness is Not Contagious. Friendship Helps Alleviate Symptoms.

by Natalie Shoemaker

Emotions are contagious, like the common cold, stress can spread to the people around you, as well as good moods and bad moods. These general observations we make in our daily lives have led some people to believe mental illness can be transmitted. However, while the symptoms of the disease may be transfered, researchers Professor Jessecae Marsh and Lindzi Shanks there's no scientific basis for it.

Marsh and Shanks wanted to study this misconception. They began by asking participants rate how contagious they believed certain mental disorders were, finding alcohol abuse had a 56 percent chance of transmission, anorexia 35.7 percent, and depression 32.2 percent—the most communicable “diseases.” Whereas disorders, like Tourette’s (4.2 percent), autism (5.3 percent), and schizophrenia (7.4 percent), were considered much less so. 

Of course, participants' willingness to interact with those afflicted with a mental disorder was related to how contagious they thought they were. A higher rate of a disorder's possible transmission, the less likely participants were to interact with them.

But how did the participants think these disorders were being transfered? Well, through social interactions. One participants explained, “If you hang out with someone that drinks all the time, you will soon be drinking a lot as well.”

This notion is, of course, false and this kind of misconception could lead those suffering isolated, magnifying the severity of their disorder.

In fact, another study published in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society found evidence of more social interaction as a protection against depression.

First author of the study, Mr Edward Hill, said: 

“Our results suggest that promotion of any friendship between adolescents can reduce depression since having depressed friends does not put them at risk, but having healthy friends is both protective and curative.”

Read more at PsyBlog and Medical Daily.

Photo Credit: Hulton Archive / Stringer/ Getty