Does Recovery Matter? Public Attitudes Toward Addiction and Mental Health Problems in Iceland

Sociologists have a long-standing interest in stigma, including how and when the public stigmatizes individuals and groups. Mental illness and drug abuse have been stigmatized across societies for a long time, but recent research shows that the public has become more likely to draw lines between different conditions. This means that some conditions that were previously heavily stigmatized have become close to normalized. Yet, conditions that are perceived as more serious continue to result in high levels of public stigma. Different approaches to mental health treatment (e.g. medication, different forms of therapy, the ideology of empowerment) highlight the hope of recovery. While more and more people that have recovered from serious mental illness and/or addiction lead productive lives in societies, less is known about the relationship between stigma and recovery. Consequently, an interesting question on the role of recovery in stigma reduction arises, specifically whether the public is less likely to stigmatize people who have recovered from either serious mental illness or addiction. Using data from the 2024 Icelandic stigma study, I ask „Does recovery decrease stigma associated with schizophrenia, alcohol abuse and/or heroin addiction?“ The analysis compares the three conditions focusing on whether stigma reduction is similar or different for mental illness versus addiction. In addition, I test whether the impact of recovery is modified by causal attributions and belief in the effectiveness of treatment. The results have implications for stigma reduction efforts as they provide insights into the processes of stigma across conditions and take into account the potential stigma reducing impact of recovery.