New evidence on a classic sociological debate allows for a test of the consequences of self-labeling with mental illness. While a medicalized "insight" perspective emphasizes the importance of self-labeling for psychological well-being and recovery, a sociologically informed "outsight" perspective draws from modified labeling, self-labeling, and stigma resistance theories to suggest that self-labeling can generate negative consequences for self-esteem. We engage this debate by examining the effects of mental illness self-labels on a crucial component of psychological well-being for persons with mental health problems-self-esteem-by using longitudinal data that followed 427 sixth-grade youth over two years. Our findings support an outsight perspective whereby adopting a self-label led to decreased self-esteem, while those who dropped a self-label experienced increased self-esteem. This conclusion calls for revisions to prevailing public mental health models that overlook how self-labels can impede rather than enhance psychological well-being and recovery efforts.

中文翻译：

---

自我标签的力量：检查有心理健康问题的青少年的自尊后果。

经典社会学辩论的新证据可以检验自我贴上精神疾病标签的后果。虽然医学化的“洞察力”观点强调自我标签对于心理健康和康复的重要性，但社会学知情的“洞察力”观点借鉴了修正标签、自我标签和耻辱抵抗理论，表明自我标签可以产生对自尊的负面影响。我们通过使用追踪 427 名六年级青少年两年多的纵向数据来研究精神疾病自我标签对有精神健康问题的人心理健康的一个重要组成部分（自尊）的影响，从而参与这场辩论。我们的研究结果支持了一种外在观点，即采用自我标签会导致自尊心下降，而那些放弃自我标签的人则会增加自尊心。这一结论要求对现行的公共心理健康模型进行修订，这些模型忽视了自我标签如何阻碍而不是增强心理健康和康复工作。