<p>People's attitudes towards people living with HIV/AIDS remain a major community challenge. There is a need to generate a climate of understanding, compassion and dignity in which people living with HIV/AIDS (PLWHA) will be able to voluntarily disclose their status and receive the support and respect all people deserve. However, many people expereince discrimination because they have HIV/AIDS. In a certain area in Khayelitsha, a township in Cape Town, a young woman was killed after disclosing the HIV status after being raped by five men. While many previous studies have focused on the external stigma in the general population, there is a dearth of studies on stigma among PLWHA themselves and hence the aim of the present study was to investigate stigma attached to HIV/AIDS from the perspective of PLWHA.</p>

A sample of 227 undergraduate students was administered pre-intervention paper-and-pencil questionnaires to assess homophobia, fear of AIDS contagion, symbolic representations of AIDS and homosexuality, and specific personality attributes including authoritarianism, religiosity, and conservatism. Participants then read one of eight intervention vignettes about an ill person; these vignettes varied by sexual orientation of the patient, disease (AIDS versus lung cancer), and mode of transmission (in the AIDS conditions). Participants then completed post-intervention measures assessing the degree to which the ill person in the vignette was responsible and to blame for his illness, the level of stigma toward him, and concerns about social interactions with him. Results indicate the following: a) Attributions of personal responsibility are primarily a function of mode of illness transmission; b) fear of AIDS contagion is predictive of stigma and social avoidance of PWAs; and c) AIDS-related stigma and attributions of blame are largely a function of symbolic associations between homosexuality and IV drug abuse (which were previously stigmatized) and AIDS.

M.A. / This study looks at how our identities are communally formed and shaped within various contexts. It considers how such interaction can create a sense of self that could potentially shift, remain the same or become "stuck" in our experiences of connectiondisconnection. Modernism and postmodernism as two of the main ways of understanding our world/s are considered in positioning this research instance. Furthermore, the field of community psychology and some community psychological models are discussed along with the underlying principles of each. This study looks at identity-formation from a post-modern perspective and assumptions are based on ideas from the field of social constructionism. Such assumptions include the following notions: That our sense of self are manifestations of relationships; that we have multiple possible selves relative to the context; that our identities are evolving products of history and that our sense of belonging and of being separate are elements of identity. Ideas around "mental illness", the treatment system and the labelling of the "mentally ill" are also considered in the processes of identity formation. The aim of this study is to look at all the abovementioned elements in the process of coconstructing a healing community with chronic psychiatric patients, so that, the ways in which we look at ourselves as well as others in the world, could include wider healing self-definitions.

Typescript (photocopy). / Digitized by Kansas Correctional Industries / Department: Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work.

This dissertation consists of three studies to assess nurses’ attitudes toward persons with mental illness. The first study was an integrative review of literature which revealed that surveyed nurses across 20 countries and three continents had mixed attitudes toward people with mental illness. While those attitudes mirrored attitudes of the general public and health providers in the United States, none of the identified studies explored nurses’ attitudes toward people with mental illness in the United States and none included a theoretical framework, showing several gaps in knowledge. Therefore, in the second paper of this dissertation two leading theories regarding stigma were analyzed and compared in order to select the best theoretical framework to guide a survey of psychiatric nurses’ attitudes toward the mentally ill, which comprises the third study of this dissertation. The Modified Labeling Theory (MLT) and the Cognitive Behavioral Models (CBM) were analyzed and evaluated. Since the MLT had strong empirical evidence, it was selected to guide the quantitative study that explored nurses’ attitudes toward people with mental illness. This exploration of 146 mental health workers and registered nurses’ attitudes in a 270-bed psychiatric hospital in New York examined three areas: it assessed respondents’ beliefs about devaluation and discrimination of people with mental illness and factors related to these beliefs; compared respondents’ expressed stigmatizing actions toward patients with schizophrenia or depression versus those with diabetes but no mental illness; and it assessed the extent to which study results were consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of the MLT. In general, respondents expressed the belief that people with mental illness would be devaluated and discriminated and expressed stronger desire for social distance from a person with schizophrenia than depression. Even though the respondents did not express a desire for social distance from a person with depression, they indicated their preference to be closer to a person with diabetes. Finally, the results of the study were consistent with the theoretical underpinnings of the MLT, confirming that the MLT is appropriate for use as a guiding theoretical framework for future research in nursing. Implications for future research, nursing education and practice are discussed.

Wen, Shanshan. / Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2010. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-54). / Abstracts and appendix in English and Chinese. / Abstract --- p.ii / 摘要 --- p.iii / Acknowledgements --- p.iv / Chapter Chapter 1: --- Introduction --- p.1 / Chapter 1.1 --- Background --- p.1 / Chapter 1.2 --- Problem Statement --- p.2 / Chapter 1.3 --- Research Questions --- p.3 / Chapter 1.4 --- Organization of Subsequent Chapters --- p.4 / Chapter Chapter 2: --- Theoretical Framework --- p.5 / Chapter 2.1 --- Dirty Work in Organizations --- p.5 / Chapter 2.2 --- Stigma and Its Impact --- p.7 / Chapter 2.3 --- Perceived Physical Work Dirtiness and Its Impact on Dirty Workers --- p.9 / Chapter 2.4 --- Coping Strategies for Identity Threat due to Stigma --- p.11 / Chapter 2.5 --- Social Comparison and Its Impacts --- p.12 / Chapter 2.6 --- Individual Differences in Social Comparison --- p.15 / Chapter 2.7 --- Hypothesis Development --- p.16 / FIGURE 1 Hypothesized effects on Job Satisfaction --- p.25 / FIGURE 2 Hypothesized effects on Occupational Identification --- p.25 / Chapter Chapter 3: --- Methods --- p.26 / Chapter 3.1 --- Participants and Procedures --- p.26 / Chapter 3.2 --- Measures --- p.29 / Chapter 3.3 --- Control Variables --- p.32 / TABLE 1 Demographic Characteristics of Participants --- p.33 / Chapter 3.4 --- Analytical Tools --- p.34 / Chapter Chapter4: --- Results --- p.35 / "TABLE 2 Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations" --- p.38 / TABLE 3 Multiple Regression Analysis on Job Satisfaction --- p.39 / TABLE 4 Multiple Regression Analysis on Occupational Identification --- p.40 / FIGURE 3 Variance of Perceived Physical Work Dirtiness --- p.41 / FIGURE 4 Moderating Effect of Upward comparison Orientation --- p.41 / Chapter Chapter 5: --- Discussion --- p.42 / Chapter 5.1 --- Summary of Findings --- p.42 / Chapter 5.2 --- Contributions --- p.43 / Chapter 5.3 --- Limitations --- p.44 / Chapter 5.4 --- Practical Implications --- p.45 / References --- p.46 / APPENDIX A Questionnaire (English Version) --- p.55 / APPENDIX B Questionnaire (Chinese Version) --- p.59

This study tested whether participants exposed to a vignette describing an individual experiencing symptoms of depression, which included only the specific diagnosis label of "depression," would report significantly less stigmatized responses than participants exposed to an otherwise identical vignette which included only the non-specific diagnosis label "mental illness." The study is grounded in past research on stigmatization of mental illness and is informed by three theoretical frameworks, the social identity perspective, attribution theory, and labeling theory. Participants were randomly assigned to read one of the two alternate vignettes, then respond to a series of measures testing desire for social distance, negative emotion (affective reaction), beliefs about people with mental illness, and perceived dangerousness of the character in response to the vignette they viewed. The results showed that labelling the character in the vignettes as struggling with "mental illness" did lead to greater perceived dangerousness of the character described, although labelling did not lead to more stigmatization in any of the other measures. This research demonstrated that people tend to consider a character in a vignette as less trustworthy and more of a risk based solely on the label "mental illness." The experiment also tested if people who have had a personal relationship with someone who has experienced mental illness will have less stigmatized responses to mental illness vignettes, but no significant difference was shown. Overall, the results imply that use of specific language in communication labelling an individual as experiencing a mental health condition is less stigmatizing than non-specific language and may improve chances for successful treatment-seeking and future patient outcomes.

Thesis (M.A. (Clinical psychology )) --University of Limpopo, 2009 / This study is aimed at exploring the influence of shame and stigma on the psychological functioning of HIV/AIDS and cancer patients. Four hypotheses were stated and they are: 1. There will be a difference on the scores of shame and stigma and psychological functioning between HIV/AIDS and cancer patients. 2. Patients who experience shame and stigma are more likely to experience psychological dysfunction than those who do not. 3. Females will experience more shame and stigma, and then consequently report more psychological dysfunctions than males. 4. There will be a difference on the scores of shame and stigma and psychological functioning between age groups. Method: This study used a quantitative research design. A convenient sample of 100 HIV and cancer patients from different race, ethnicities, genders and age groups participated in this study. Statistical tests used to measure the results included means and ANOVAs. Results: Results revealed that HIV patients do experience more enacted stigma and anxiety than cancer patients. Enacted stigma and perceived community stigma were associated with anxiety, and depression. Females experienced more enacted stigma than males whiles males and internal felt stigma than females. There were age differences in the experience of somatic symptoms and internal felt stigma. Conclusion: Recommendation included that shame and stigma be addressed through stress management and the community counselling model.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Memorial University of Newfoundland, 2005. / Bibliography: leaves 370-404.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration, 2001. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available on the Internet.