The Oxford Handbook of Stigma, Discrimination, and Health

Abstract

Throughout the world, groups that are socially disadvantaged have poorer health compared to groups that are more advantaged. This book examines the role that stigma and discrimination play in creating and sustaining these group health disparities. Stigma is a social construction in which people who are distinguished by a “mark” are viewed as deviant, socially excluded, and devalued. Stigma and the discrimination it engenders negatively affect health through multiple mechanisms operating at several different levels of influence. Collectively, these shape both the orientations of people toward members of stigmatized groups and the experiences, and often the self-concepts, of members of groups targeted by stigma. Stigma affects individual-level affective, cognitive, behavioral, and physiological responses that increase stress in the lives of stigmatized groups. Stigma also restricts access to social and community-level resources relevant to good health and exposes individuals to more toxic environments. All act to erode the health of people who are stigmatized. This volume provides a cutting edge, multidisciplinary, multilevel analysis of health and health disparities through the integrative lens of stigma. It brings together the research of leading social and health psychologists, sociologists, public health scholars, and medical ethicists who study stigma and health. It integrates independent literatures on the health-related outcomes of stigma and discrimination and the diverse pathways and processes by which stigma and discrimination affect multiple health outcomes. The book is also forward-looking: It discusses the implications of these themes for policy, interventions, and health care, as well as identifies the most important directions for future research.