Albeit mental illness is a common illness millions of people experience, researchers believe that the negative labels associated with mental illness effect mentally ill patients. Researchers Amy Kroska and Sarah Harkness developed the hypothesis that once one is diagnosed with a mental illness, they stimulate negative feelings about themselves due to the negative labels society associates with mentally ill people by perusing old studies and conducting studies of their own. Their results empathized the differences in self-meanings by diagnosis. The researchers conducted research questions that focused on how mentally ill patients saw themselves and how they believed others saw them. The data was collected from two general hospitals within around