Honors Theses
Date of Award
Spring 5-8-2026
Document Type
Undergraduate Thesis
Department
Psychology
First Advisor
Todd Smitherman
Second Advisor
Aaron Lee
Third Advisor
Allison Ford-Wade
Relational Format
Dissertation/Thesis
Abstract
Migraine is a chronic neurological disorder that affects millions of individuals throughout the world and is associated with a range of psychological influences. Stigma, or the discrediting of individuals based on a particular characteristic, plays an important role in various health conditions but has rarely been explored in migraine. The purpose of this study was to explore public stigma toward migraine in comparison to epilepsy among individuals without either condition. Two hundred sixty-seven undergraduates responded to one of four randomly assigned vignettes, in which they were told a hypothetical class partner (man/woman) canceled a meeting for a group project due to a migraine attack or epileptic seizure. They were then asked questions evaluating their attitudes toward the partner and responded to a self-report measure about stigma toward individuals with migraine or epilepsy more broadly. Mann-Whitney U tests were used to compare stigmatizing attitudes as a function of gender and health condition, and ordinal regression was used to explore interaction effects.
Individuals with migraine were evaluated as significantly less competent, trustworthy, and dependable than those with epilepsy (all ps < .001), with effect sizes ranging from .28 to .33. Respondents also evaluated the partner with migraine as less committed to their education and were more likely to provide a negative evaluation of that partner to their professor (both ps < .001). Consistent with the vignette data, the number of stigmatizing attitudes toward individuals with migraine was more than double that toward those with epilepsy (median = 6.0 vs. 2.0; mean = 5.98 [3.30] vs. 2.81 [3.01]). No interaction effects with gender and medical condition were found. These results indicate that migraine is associated with greater judgments of personal inadequacy and perceived use for secondary gain, rather than being viewed as a legitimate medical condition. Future studies with broader samples should explore the negative effects of public stigma on individuals with migraine and strategies to reduce or prevent stigma.
Recommended Citation
Phung, Savanna, "Public Stigma Toward Individuals with Migraine" (2026). Honors Theses. 3397.
https://egrove.olemiss.edu/hon_thesis/3397
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