Stigma and Social Welfare


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Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders


Book Description

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.




The Oxford Handbook of Stigma, Discrimination, and Health


Book Description

Stigma leads to poorer health. In The Oxford Handbook of Stigma, Discrimination, and Health, leading scholars identify stigma mechanisms that operate at multiple levels to erode the health of stigmatized individuals and, collectively, produce health disparities. This book provides unique insights concerning the link between stigma and health across various types of stigma and groups.




Stigma


Book Description

Although references to stigma were commonplace in the field of social policy and elsewhere, the concept was often used in a rather imprecise way. Originally published in 1984, this book assesses the relevance of the concept of stigma for the study of social policy. Investigations of the concept within the welfare field have tended to be far too narrow in focus (i.e. the concept has been regarded as a technical problem which can be eradicated by greater adherence to the principle of universalism). As a counter to this perspective, Robert Page argues that it is necessary to distinguish much more clearly between various aspects of the concept of stigma (e.g. stigmas, stigmatization and felt stigma). He examines the reasons why, and the ways in which, one particular ‘welfare’ group – unmarried mothers – have been stigmatized over the centuries in order to highlight the importance of examining existing patterns of ‘welfare’ and other forms of stigmatization within their political, economic, social and historical context. It is concluded that stigma will continue to be a key concept for both students and practitioners within the field of social policy provided that it is examined from this wider perspective.




Poverty, Inequality and Social Work


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A critical analysis of the domino effect of neoliberalism and austerity on social work. Applying theory including those of Bourdieu and Wacquant to practice, it argues that social work should return to a focus on relational and community approaches.




Social Theory and Social Policy


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The Stigma of Poverty


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Stigma


Book Description

From the author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Stigma is analyzes a person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to people whom society calls “normal.” Stigma is an illuminating excursion into the situation of persons who are unable to conform to standards that society calls normal. Disqualified from full social acceptance, they are stigmatized individuals. Physically deformed people, ex-mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, or those ostracized for other reasons must constantly strive to adjust to their precarious social identities. Their image of themselves must daily confront and be affronted by the image which others reflect back to them. Drawing extensively on autobiographies and case studies, sociologist Erving Goffman analyzes the stigmatized person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to “normals” He explores the variety of strategies stigmatized individuals employ to deal with the rejection of others, and the complex sorts of information about themselves they project. In Stigma the interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America’s leading social analysts.




The Dilemma of Difference


Book Description

The topic of stigma came to the attention of modern-day behav ioral science in 1963 through Erving Goffman's book with the engaging title, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Following its publication, scholars in such fields as an thropology, clinical psychology, social psychology, sociology, and history began to study the important role of stigma in human interaction. Beginning in the early 1960s and continuing to the present day, a body of research literature has emerged to extend, elaborate, and qualify Goffman's original ideas. The essays pre sented in this volume are the outgrowth of these developments and represent an attempt to add impetus to theory and research in this area. Much of the stigma research that has been conducted since 1963 has sought to test one or another of Goffman's notions about the effects of stigma on social interactions and the self. Social and clinical psychologists have tried to experimentally create a number of the effects that Goffman asserted stigmas have on ordinary social interactions, and sociologists have looked for eVidence of the same in survey and observational studies of stig matized people in situations of everyday life. By 1980, a consider able body of empirical evidence had been amassed about social stigmas and the devastating effects they can have on social interactions.




The Shame of It


Book Description

The shame experienced by people living in poverty has long been recognised. Nobel laureate and economist, Amartya Sen, has described shame as the irreducible core of poverty. However, little attention has been paid to the implications of this connection in the making and implementation of anti-poverty policies. This important volume rectifies this critical omission and demonstrates the need to take account of the psychological consequences of poverty for policy to be effective. Drawing on pioneering empirical research in countries as diverse as Britain, Uganda, Norway, Pakistan, India, South Korea and China, it outlines core principles that can aid policy makers in policy development. In so doing, it provides the foundation for a shift in policy learning on a global scale and bridges the traditional distinctions between North and South, and high-, middle- and low-income countries. This will help students, academics and policy makers better understand the reasons for the varying effectiveness of anti-poverty policies.