Mental health stigma has been identified as a barrier to help-seeking in the United States. Research suggests that insecure attachment may contribute to higher mental health stigma and lower help-seeking behavior. This may be particularly salient in military personnel who tend to report higher mental health stigma than the general population. Evidence suggests that both supportive and destructive military leadership are related to service members' attitudes toward seeking help. In the current study, a sample of military service members and veterans (N = 232) completed an online survey regarding mental health stigma, military leadership experiences, attachment strategies, and mental health help-seeking behaviors. Findings indicated that destructive and supportive leadership experiences were significantly related to self and public stigma, and self-stigma mediated the relationship between destructive and supportive leadership experiences and likelihood to seek help. Attachment anxiety predicted higher self and public stigma, while attachment avoidance predicted high self-stigma but low public stigma, with high self-stigma partially mediating the relationship between attachment avoidance and help seeking.

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Stigma is one factor posited to play a role in the negative physical and mental health sequelae of sexual victimization (e.g., Finkelhor & Browne, 1985). Stigma has been shown to be associated with negative health outcomes across various marginalized populations, including LGBT individuals (e.g., Hatzenbuehler et al., 2014), and difficulties with emotion regulation (DERS) have been shown to be one mechanism through which stigma leads to psychological outcomes (Hatzenbuehler et al., 2009). This study sought to examine if DERS (Gratz & Roemer, 2004) mediated the relation between sexual victimization stigma (Gibson & Leitenberg, 2001) and physical health outcomes of general self-rated health and somatic symptoms (SSS-8; Gierk et al., 2014) in a sample of college students (N=194, 79% female, 81% white) in rural Appalachia with an experience of sexual victimization. Emotion regulation difficulties significantly mediated the relation between stigma and both health outcomes [self-rated health: R2 = .07, F(2,179) = 7.20, p < .01, indirect effect t(179) = -2.64, p < .01, CI = -.011, - .001; somatic symptoms: R2 = .23, F(2,180) = 27.50, p < .000, indirect effect t(180) = 5.41, p < .000, CI = .05, .02]. Results highlight the importance of considering the role of stigma for survivors of sexual violence, as well as suggest a treatment target in increasing emotion regulation skills.

Sexual minorities are at risk for poorer mental health outcomes due to unique minority stressors. Anticipated stigma and concealment are documented as predictors of worse outcomes among this population; however, limited research has examined how interactions between minority stressors contribute to health outcomes. This study of sexual minorities (n = 147) recruited through social media examined the moderating role of concealment on the relationship between anticipated stigma and psychiatric symptoms (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms). Moderation analyses revealed concealment significantly moderated the relationship between anticipated stigma and anxiety symptoms, but not depressive symptoms. Clinically addressing minority stress may reduce psychiatric symptoms.

Ethnic minority groups are societally defined groups that exist as psychological and/or numerical minorities, and whose members presumably share biological and/or cultural heritage (Markus, 2008). Although religious and national minority groups clearly are defined by culture, racial minority groups (which psychologists have tended to regard as defined by biology; Fairchild, Yee, Wyatt, & Weizmann, 1995;Yee, Fairchild, Weizmann, & Wyatt, 1993) similarly are defined by culture (Jones, 1997). In turn, culturally diverse families are defined by the presence of one or more family members who are members of racial, religious, or national minority groups within a given society (Gaines, 1997). According to Erving Goffman (1963), stigmatization toward members of ethnic minority groups not only can affect those individuals but also can affect the individuals' families. Within the U.S.A. and other Western nations, majority group members as well as minority group members in interracial marriages often are acutely aware of the transmission of stigmatization throughout entire families (Gaines & Ickes, 2000). However, the transmission of stigmatization can occur in all families in which one or more members belong to racial, religious, or national minority groups (Gaines, 2001). In the present chapter, we draw upon Goffman's (1959, 1963) symbolic interactionist theory in examining support communication within culturally diverse families. We pay particular attention to Goffman's (1963) concept of stigma as applied to members of ethnic minority groups and as applied to their families. Moreover, we focus on specific forms of support communication (following Mickelson & Williams, 2008; Williams & Mickelson, 2008) that members of ethnic minority groups may use to obtain social support from family members and, thus, counteract the potentially negative effects of stigmatization. In addition, we consider the utility of Claude Steele's (1997) concept of stereotype threat in explaining the potential lack of generalizability of support communication processes across ethnic (and especially racial) groups.

This study examines the perceived stigma of poverty by assessing individuals' negative feelings about being poor (internalized stigma), and their beliefs about whether others treat them as stigmatized (experienced stigma). In a combined sample of low-income women (N = 210), we tested a dual-pathway model to explain how these perceived stigma dimensions are related to depression among the impoverished. We proposed that interpersonal (i.e., impaired support availability and heightened fear of support request rejection) and infrapersonal factors (i.e., impaired self-esteem) differentially mediate the relationship of internalized and experienced poverty stigma with depression. Structural equation modeling partially supported the model: internalized stigma and depression were partially mediated by self-esteem and fear of rejection, while experienced stigma was related to depression through fear of rejection only. In other words, internalized and experienced perceived stigma activate separate and similar mechanisms to influence depression among the poor.

Stigma is an individual’s devalued identity or other characteristic that may lead to stereotyping, prejudice, and discrimination. Decades of literature show that experiencing stigma has negative effects on mental health outcomes. However, some research suggests that the experience of stigma leads individuals to cope with adversity in a meaningful way. Understanding how people benefit from adversity will help promote less distress for people who experience different types (visible or covert) of stigma. Three central questions were addressed. First, is level of distress different based on experience with stigma? Second, does having self-compassion buffer individuals with stigma, in that people with more self-compassion would have less distress than those with less self-compassion? Third, does more stigma experiences lead to more compassion toward others and contribute to lower levels of distress? To explore these questions, participants (N = 416) at a southeastern university completed on-line surveys to assess experience with stigma, compassion, and distress. Separate hierarchical multiple regression analyses were used to examine whether (1) quantity of stigma, (2) directness of stigma, (3) level of visibility of stigma were related to distress. The direct experience of stigma and the lack of visibility of the stigmatizing characteristic significantly predicted higher levels of distress (b = .09, p < .01; b = .09, p < .01; respectively). In order to examine self-compassion as a moderator of the effect of stigma on distress, we conducted moderated regression analysis, with distress as the dependent variable, the centered stigma and self-compassion variables, as well as, the interaction between stigma and self-compassion, as predictors. This hypothesis was not supported. In order to address central question three, indirect effects were tested using bootstrapping (an SPSS script; Preacher and Hayes). Indirect experiences of stigma predicted compassion for others (b = .04, p < .05) which predicted less distress (b = -.32, p < .01). Given these results a follow-up study was conducted to further investigate these relationships. In a follow-up study of participants experiencing either a covert or invisible stigmatizing characteristic, self-compassion is induced by encouraging the participant to help another with the same stigmatizing characteristic. Preliminary results of the inductions effects on compassion for others, self-compassion, and distress will be presented.

Individuals who identify themselves as sexual or gender minorities report experienced and anticipated stigma known as minority stress. This stigma or stress has been consistently linked with worse mental health outcomes (e.g., depression, anxiety) compared with non-stigmatized (heterosexual, cisgender) individuals. However, little is understood about sexual minorities who also identify as gender minorities. This “doubly stigmatized” subgroup of the population may be transgender or gender-nonconforming or non-binary while simultaneously holding a non-heterosexual identity. This study sought to explore whether stigma and minority stress processes were different between individuals who identified as sexual minority/ gender majority (n=148) versus sexual and gender minority (n=167). Results revealed that individuals who were both sexual and gender minorities reported significantly more depressive and anxiety symptoms, greater minority stress, and fewer support resources. Moreover, increased minority stress (anticipated discrimination) and fewer support resources explained the disparity in mental health (bootstrapped indirect effects = -.4111 se=.1720 95%CI=-.8675, -.1634) between sexual and gender SATURDAY PROGRAM • JUNE 22, 2019 103 minority versus sexual minority/gender majority participants. Community connection was further examined as a potential moderating resource. Findings are discussed in relation to multiple stigmatized identities, the intersections of sexuality and gender identity, and the need for both future research and support resources for this population.

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