Content area
Abstract
This is a qualitative study of mental health practitioners’ experience of disclosing their own mental health diagnoses to their colleagues. 10 mental health practitioners participated in an unstructured interview, and conventional content analysis was utilized to analyze the data. The eight categories of common themes that emerged were: (a) motivated to disclose by symptoms negatively impacting functionality in clinical work, (b) mental health stigma awareness decreases willingness to disclose, (c) responses of acceptance and normalization increase wellbeing and willingness to disclose, (d) past experience of disclosure anxiety influences therapeutic stance, (e) wary responses to disclosure experienced as hurtful, shaming, and decreasing willingness to disclose in future, (f) negative response to requests for accommodations after disclosure cause resentment, (g) decision process about whether to make a disclosure experienced as cautious and anxiety provoking, and (h) utilizing humor to cope with anxiety about stigma in discussions with colleagues. The discussion of the findings focuses on the mental health professionals’ mental illness identity and stigma as an aspect of psychotherapy culture.
