There are many different perspectives for understanding autism. These perspectives may each convey different levels of stigma for autistic individuals. This qualitative study aimed to understand how ...autistic individuals make sense of their own autism and experience the stigma attached to autism. The study used critical grounded theory tools. Participants (N = 20) discussed autism as central to their identity, and integral to who they are. While participants thought of autism as value neutral, they expressed how society confers negative meanings onto autism, and thus, them. The findings also indicate that different understandings of autism confer different levels of stigma. Participants expressed constant exposure to stigma and managed this stigma in different ways. Such methods included reframing to more positive understandings of autism, the reclamation of language, and using concealment and disclosure strategically. The implications of these findings are discussed further in the article.
Points of interest
Autistic research participants consider their autism to be value neutral - akin to any other feature like race or hair colour.
Participants feel that society sees their autism as being a bad trait to have.
Participants struggled with the tension in how they see themselves, versus how they believe society sees them.
Participants are caught between disclosing that they are autistic and concealing it, but feel they are treated negatively either way.
Participants use the word "autistic" to reclaim autism from stigma, and to reframe peoples understandings of autism to be less negative.
Research into autism and mental health has traditionally associated poor mental health and autism as inevitably linked. Other possible explanations for mental health problems among autistic ...populations have received little attention. As evidenced by the minority disability movement, autism is increasingly being considered part of the identities of autistic people. Autistic individuals thus constitute an identity-based minority and may be exposed to excess social stress as a result of disadvantaged and stigmatized social status. The authors test the utility of the minority stress model as an explanation for the experience of mental health problems within a sample of high-functioning autistic individuals (n = 111). Minority stressors including everyday discrimination, internalized stigma, and concealment significantly predicted poorer mental health, despite controlling for general stress exposure. These results indicate the potential utility of minority stress in explaining increased mental health problems in autistic populations. Implications for research and clinical applications are discussed.
Objective: The extent to which the outcome of the European Union referendum ("Brexit") has affected the mental health of migrants living in the United Kingdom has been the subject of much ...speculation. However, no empirical attempts to examine the mental health impact of the Brexit vote have been made. Through the combination of structural stigma and minority stress theories, this study examined the extent to which the outcome of the Brexit referendum was associated with the mental health of migrants in the United Kingdom as a result of increased discrimination. Method: Adult migrants living in the United Kingdom (N = 311) participated in a longitudinal survey containing measures of discrimination and symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) at baseline and at 1-month and 6-month follow-ups. Participant data were matched to official voting records at the electorate level. Results: The percentage of "leave" voters where participants lived was associated with increased discrimination, which was in turn associated with increased GAD symptoms, including the likelihood of experiencing clinically significant GAD symptoms over the course of the study (OR = 3.01, 95% confidence interval CI: 1.25, 7.33). The percentage of leave voters where participants lived was associated with increased GAD symptoms indirectly via increased discrimination (standardized indirect effect = .12; 95% bias-corrected CI .07, .19). Conclusions: This study demonstrates that voter referenda can have a detrimental impact on migrants' mental health. Findings illustrate how aspects of structural stigma can produce experiences of minority stress, which can lead to negative mental health outcomes for members of marginalized populations.
What is the public health significance of this article?
The present findings provide evidence for the widely theorized negative effects of the Brexit referendum on the social climate and mental health of migrants living in the United Kingdom. Clinicians may have to contend with higher levels of mental health problems in the United Kingdom's migrant population and may benefit from an awareness of how various aspects of the post-Brexit social climate can contribute to heightened anxiety and other forms of psychological distress. Further, the present study adds to a small but growing international body of evidence indicating that the social climate emerging from voter referenda on the rights of minority groups can be damaging for the mental health of minority groups by increasing exposure to social stress in the form of discrimination.
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This study examined the effects of minority stress on the physical health of lesbians, gay men, and bisexuals (LGBs). Participants (
N
= 396) completed baseline and one year follow-up interviews. ...Exposure to stress and health outcomes were assessed with two methods: a subjective self-appraisal method and a method whereby two independent judges externally rated event narratives using standardized criteria. The odds of experiencing a physical health problem at follow-up were significantly higher among LGBs who experienced an externally rated prejudice event during the follow-up period compared to those who did not. This association persisted after adjusting for experiences of general stressful life events that were not related to prejudice. Self-appraised minority stress exposures were not associated with poorer physical health at 1-year follow-up. Prejudice-related stressful life events have a unique deleterious impact on health that persists above and beyond the effect of stressful life events unrelated to prejudice.
The American Psychological Association Publications and Communications Board Working Group on Journal Article Reporting Standards for Qualitative Research (JARS-Qual Working Group) was charged with ...examining the state of journal article reporting standards as they applied to qualitative research and with generating recommendations for standards that would be appropriate for a wide range of methods within the discipline of psychology. These standards describe what should be included in a research report to enable and facilitate the review process. This publication marks a historical moment-the first inclusion of qualitative research in APA Style, which is the basis of both the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (APA, 2010) and APA Style CENTRAL, an online program to support APA Style. In addition to the general JARS-Qual guidelines, the Working Group has developed standards for both qualitative meta-analysis and mixed methods research. The reporting standards were developed for psychological qualitative research but may hold utility for a broad range of social sciences. They honor a range of qualitative traditions, methods, and reporting styles. The Working Group was composed of a group of researchers with backgrounds in varying methods, research topics, and approaches to inquiry. In this article, they present these standards and their rationale, and they detail the ways that the standards differ from the quantitative research reporting standards. They describe how the standards can be used by authors in the process of writing qualitative research for submission as well as by reviewers and editors in the process of reviewing research.
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During the past 50 years, there have been marked improvement in the social and legal environment of sexual minorities in the United States. Minority stress theory predicts that health of sexual ...minorities is predicated on the social environment. As the social environment improves, exposure to stress would decline and health outcomes would improve. We assessed how stress, identity, connectedness with the LGBT community, and psychological distress and suicide behavior varied across three distinct cohorts of sexual minority people in the United States. Using a national probability sample recruited in 2016 and 2017, we assessed three a priori defined cohorts of sexual minorities we labeled the pride (born 1956-1963), visibility (born 1974-1981), and equality (born 1990-1997) cohorts. We found significant and impressive cohort differences in coming out milestones, with members of the younger cohort coming out much earlier than members of the two older cohorts. But we found no signs that the improved social environment attenuated their exposure to minority stressors-both distal stressors, such as violence and discrimination, and proximal stressors, such as internalized homophobia and expectations of rejection. Psychological distress and suicide behavior also were not improved, and indeed were worse for the younger than the older cohorts. These findings suggest that changes in the social environment had limited impact on stress processes and mental health for sexual minority people. They speak to the endurance of cultural ideologies such as homophobia and heterosexism and accompanying rejection of and violence toward sexual minorities.
The minority stress model has been influential in guiding research on sexual and gender minority health and well-being in psychology and related social and health sciences. Minority stress has ...theoretical roots in psychology, sociology, public health, and social welfare. Meyer provided the first integrative articulation of minority stress in 2003 as an explanatory theory aimed at understanding the social, psychological, and structural factors accounting for mental health inequalities facing sexual minority populations. This article reviews developments in minority stress theory over the past two decades, focusing on critiques, applications, and reflections on its continued relevance in the context of rapidly changing social and policy contexts.
Research on the health of sexual and gender minority populations has been predominantly framed within the context of health disparities and social stress. Findings produced from research employing ...health disparities and social stress frameworks have spurred significant advancements in basic and applied science on sexual and gender minority health, and have been useful in arguing for the removal of discriminatory social policies. Critiques of these frameworks suggest their dominant role in the research literature risks an artificially narrow portrayal of relevant lived experience, and further pathologizes and stigmatizes sexual and gender minority populations. Methodological challenges involve the measurement of explanatory variables within comparative research designs. By taking stock of these benefits and challenges, suggestions can be made for future research designed to maximize the benefits of health disparities and social stress frameworks for understanding and improving the health of sexual and gender minority populations in ways that are responsive to critiques while recognizing variability in lived experience.
Transgender people often experience oppression because of gender nonconformity. They represent an extremely stigmatized population at high risk of developing mental health problems. The minority ...stress model is a theoretical model used to understand social stigma as a potential cause of mental health disparities faced by the transgender population. In Italy, studies applying this model to the transgender population are limited. The current study applied the minority stress model to a sample of Italian transgender people (n = 149), analyzing effects of prejudice events, expectations of rejection, and internalized transphobia, and their interaction with protective factors (resilience and social support), on mental health. The results suggest that exposure to everyday discrimination and internalized transphobia are associated with increased mental health problems, while perceived social support from family and resilience significantly reduced the strength of association between everyday discrimination and mental health. Findings have important implications for both social issues and policies.
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