A majority of people say the COVID-19 pandemic has made attending therapy “more acceptable," according to a survey published by Superdrug Online Doctor.
The company, owned by Health Bridge Limited in the United Kingdom, surveyed 1,4000 Britons and Americans on their perspective on therapy and the most common stigmas they hold about mental health and therapy.
Seventy-one percent of respondents said they had a positive view of going to therapy, and another 21% said they viewed it neutrally, while only 7.5 percent viewed it as a negative.
Those numbers hold true among different generations including baby boomers, Generation X, millennials, and Generation Z.
Most people responding to the survey said they felt no change in perception of people involved in therapy (49.7%), while another 40% viewed attending therapy more positively.
The survey found that people in the United States were twice as likely to have a more negative perception of people in therapy with 12.3% responding that they felt that way, compared to just 5.6% in the United Kingdom.
Women were more likely than men to have a positive view of therapy 75.1%-66.2%.
While most respondents (57.3%) reported not thinking the stigmas often associated with therapy patients were true, those that still believe in the tropes say people in therapy “cannot handle their own problems (21.4%),” were “mentally weak (20%),” “exaggerated their problems (14.6%), or “have too much money (13.7%).”
Other stigmas some respondents believe are that therapy wastes time and money, people have too much free time, are crazy, or are “being taken advantage of.”
People in the United States were split equally among all the above tropes, with each getting between 14.3%-25.4% respectively, compared to the United Kingdom where 13.6% said not handling their own problems was the main stigma, followed by being mentally weak (9%).
Of those responding to the survey, 23.6% said they were currently in therapy and 73.1% said they had kept it a secret.
Age seemed to be a factor in attending therapy, with baby boomers reporting as the largest cohort in therapy (32.5%), followed by Generation X (26%), millennials (21%), and Generation Z (12.2%).
The self-reporting survey consisted of 1,476 people, of which, 1,127 were not in therapy.
The Prolific survey platform gathered the United Kingdom data (32.5%), while the Amazon MTurk platform gathered the U.S. responses (67.5%).
The reported average age of those surveyed was 37, and most respondents (56.9%) identified as female.
There was no margin of error listed for the survey and it is subject to issues such as exaggeration and bias, according to the website.
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