HIV/AIDS stigma continues affecting the provision of health services to people living with HIV/AIDS, as well as their physical and mental well-being. Scientific literature has highlighted the importance of understanding stigma manifestations that surpass one-on-one social interactions. For that reason, social research in Puerto Rico and elsewhere has highlighted the importance of understanding ...

HIV-related stigma, psychological distress, self-esteem, and social support were investigated in a sample comprising people who have concealed their HIV status to all but a selected few (limited disclosers), people who could conceal but chose to be open (full disclosers), and people who had visible symptoms that made concealing difficult (visibly stigmatized). The visibly stigmatized and full d...

This chapter addresses the psychological effects of social stigma. Stigma directly affects the stigmatized via mechanisms of discrimination, expectancy confirmation, and automatic stereotype activation, and indirectly via threats to personal and social identity. We review and organize recent theory and empirical research within an identity threat model of stigma. This model posits that situatio...

Abortion stigma is widely acknowledged in many countries, but poorly theorised. Although media accounts often evoke abortion stigma as a universal social fact, we suggest that the social production of abortion stigma is profoundly local. Abortion stigma is neither natural nor 'essential' and relies upon power disparities and inequalities for its formation. In this paper, we identify social and ...

Research on social stigma and disadvantage has flourished in the past two decades. The authors highlight the theoretical and methodological advancements that have been made, such as how experience sampling procedures and neuroscience have shed light on processes associated with social stigma. Finally, the authors discuss policy implications of historical and contemporary research on social stig...

This study describes and conceptualizes the experiences of stigma in a group of children living with HIV in São Paulo, Brazil, and evaluates the impact of access to highly active antiretroviral therapy (HAART) over the social course of AIDS and over the children's experiences of stigma. Through ethnographic research in São Paulo from 1999 to 2001, the life trajectories of 50 children ages 1-15 ...

The paper discusses the status stigma of rural-to-urban migrants in China from the perspective of social representations. Stigma associated with social status is frequently reported in academic community but there is little published information about stigma towards rural-to-urban migrants in China. The data were collected by open-ended individual interviews with 138 participants (60 urban citi...

Stigma can be a major stressor for people with schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, leading to emotional stress reactions and cognitive coping responses. Stigma is appraised as a stressor if perceived stigma-related harm exceeds an individual's perceived coping resources. It is unclear, however, how people with mental illness react to stigma stress and how that affects outcomes such as sel...

Persons living with HIV in the United States face social stigma related to their health conditions. The present study evaluated the relationship between concerns about HIV-related stigma, quality of life, and social support and evaluated social support as a possible pathway contributing to the relationship between stigma concerns and quality of life in low-income Hispanics living with HIV (N = ...