Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-dzt6s Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T09:18:27.019Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

On Stigma & Health

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2021

Abstract

Image of the first page of this content. For PDF version, please use the ‘Save PDF’ preceeding this image.'
Type
Symposium Articles: Introduction
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Law, Medicine and Ethics 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Hatzenbuehler, M. L., Phelan, J. C., and Link, B. G., “Stigma as a Fundamental Cause of Population Health Inequalities,” American Journal of Public Health 103, no. 5 (2013): 813-821.Google Scholar
Link, B. and Hatzenbuehler, M. L., “Stigma as an Unrecognized Determinant of Population Health: Research and Policy Implications,” Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and the Law 41, no. 4 (2016): 653-673.Google Scholar
Hatzenbuehler, Phelan, and Link, supra note 1.Google Scholar
Corrigan, P. W., et al., “Structural Stigma in State Legislation,” Psychiatric Services 56, no. 5 (2005): 557-563; Hatzenbuehler, M. L., et al., “Structural Stigma and All-Cause Mortality in Sexual Minority Populations,” Social Science Medicine 103 (2014): 33-41.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Link, B. G. and Phelan, J. C., “Conceptualizing Stigma,” Annual Review of Sociology 27, no. 1 (2001): 363-385.Google Scholar
Susman, J., “Disability, Stigma and Deviance,” Social Science & Medicine 38, no. 1 (1994): 15-22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
And, of course, that stigma “marks” is a product of the philology of the term itself, referencing “stigmata.” It is no coincidence, therefore, that the father of stigma studies, Erving Goffman, spent a significant portion of his seminal 1963 text discussing the significance of socially “visible” conditions in creating stigma (with important implications for experiences that remain invisible, such as invisible chronic illnesses or impairments). See Goffman, E., Stigma; Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1963).Google Scholar
Link, B. G. and Phelan, J., “Stigma Power,” Social Science & Medicine 103 (2014): 24-32.Google Scholar
Kitta, A. and Goldberg, D. S., “The Significance of Folklore for Vaccine Policy: Discarding the Deficit Model,” Critical Public Health 27, no. 4 (2017): 506-514.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pantell, M., et al., “Social Isolation: A Predictor of Mortality Comparable to Traditional Clinical Risk Factors,” American Journal of Public Health 103, no. 11 (2013): 2056-2062.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
See <https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3871270/> (last visited November 8, 2017).+(last+visited+November+8,+2017).>Google Scholar
Parker, R. and Aggleton, P., “HIV and AIDS-related Stigma and Discrimination: A Conceptual Framework and Implications for Action,” Social Science & Medicine 57, no. 1 (2003): 13-24.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. S., “Job and the Stigmatization of Chronic Pain,” Perspectives in Biology & Medicine 53, no. 3 (2010): 425-438.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
This analogy is chosen intentionally, as Goffman was actually a performance theorist; see also Burris, S., “Disease Stigma in U.S. Public Health Law,” The Journal of Law, Medicine & Ethics 30, no. 2 (2002): 179-190.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schabert, J., et al., “Social Stigma in Diabetes,” The Patient-Patient-Centered Outcomes Research 6, no. 1 (2013): 1-10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
In a North American context, 67% of Native American women in a recent study reported experiencing health care discrimination connected to type 2 diabetes. See Gonzales, K. L., et al., “Perceived Racial Discrimination in Health Care, Completion of Standard Diabetes Services, and Diabetes Control Among a Sample of American Indian Women,” Diabetes Education 40, no. 6 (2014): 747-755. There is an entire line of federal case law analyzing whether employment actions (often termination) on the basis of a worker’s type 2 diabetes violate the Americans with Disabilities Act. See also Browne, J. L., et al., “‘I Call it the Blame and Shame Disease’: A Qualitative Study about Perceptions of Social Stigma Surrounding Type 2 Diabetes,” BMJ Open 3, no. 11 (2013): e003384; Browne, J. L., et al., “‘I’m Not a Druggie, I’m Just a Diabetic’: A Qualitative Study of Stigma from the Perspective of Adults with Type 1 Diabetes,” BMJ Open 4, no. 7 (2014): e005625.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fricker, M., Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007).Google Scholar
Buchman, D. Z., Ho, A., and Goldberg, D. S., “Investigating Trust, Expertise, and Epistemic Injustice in Chronic Pain,” Journal of Bioethical Inquiry 14, no. 1 (2017): 31-42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Amy Vidali has pointed out that contemporary medical discourse on chronic gastrointestinal disorders commonly experienced by women resembles — in problematic ways — 19th century concepts of hysteria. See Vidali, A., “Hysterical Again: The Gastrointestinal Woman in Medical Discourse,” Journal of Medical Humanities 34, no. 1 (2013): 33-57. See also Purvis, D. E., “A Female Disease: The Unintentional Gendering of Fibromyalgia Social Security Claims,” Texas Journal of Women & the Law 21, no. 1 (2011): 85.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burris, supra note 15; Ramirez, M., et al., “Evaluation of Iowa’s anti-bullying Law,” Injury Epidemiology 3, no. 1 (2016): 15.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
There is, of course, a large literature discussing the extent to which law can antecede or presage widespread cultural and social change. My view is that while this can happen, for a variety of reasons, law and policy is much more likely to follow such change than to precipitate it.Google Scholar
Loftus, E., “Our Changeable Memories: Legal and Practical Implications,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience 4, no. 3 (2003): 231-234.Google Scholar
Hoffman, K. M., et al., “Racial Bias in Pain Assessment and Treatment Recommendations, and False Beliefs about Biological Differences Between Blacks and Whites,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 16 (2016): 4296-4301.Google Scholar
Goldberg, D. S., “On Ideas as Actors: How Ideas about Yellow Fever Causality Shaped Public Health Policy Responses in 19th-Century Galveston,” Canadian Bulletin of Medical History 29, no. 2 (2012): 351-371.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Farmer, P. E., et al., “Structural Violence and Clinical Medicine,” PLOS Medicine 3, no. 10 (2006): e449.Google Scholar
Whalen, D., Moss, M., and Baldwin, D., “Healing through Language: Positive Physical Health Effects of Indigenous Language Use,” F1000Research 2016, 5:852; Walters, K. L. and Simoni, J. M., “Reconceptualizing Native women’s Health: An “Indigenist” Stress-Coping Model,” American Journal of Public Health 92, no. 4 (2002): 520-524; Sotero, M., “A Conceptual Model of Historical Trauma: Implications for Public Health Practice and Research,” Journal of Health Disparities Research and Practice 1, no. 1 (2006): 93–108.Google Scholar
Bashford, A. and Strange, C., “Thinking Historically about Public Health,” Medical Humanities 33, no. 2 (2007): 87-92.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brown, L., Macintyre, K., and Trujillo, L., “Interventions to Reduce HIV/AIDS Stigma: What Have we Learned?” AIDS Education and Prevention 15, no. 1 (2003): 49-69.Google Scholar
Brody, H., The Healer’s Power (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993).Google ScholarPubMed
Szreter, S. and Woolcock, M., “Health by Association? Social Capital, Social Theory, and the Political Economy of Public Health,” International Journal of Epidemiology 33, no. 4 (2004): 650-667.Google Scholar
Rubin, O., “The Political Dimension of “Linking Social Capital”: Current Analytical Practices and the Case for Recalibration,” Theory and Society 45, no. 5 (2016): 429-449.Google Scholar
Puhl, R. M., Andreyeva, T., and Brownell, K. D., “Perceptions of Weight Discrimination: Prevalence and Comparison to Race and Gender Discrimination in America,” International Journal of Obesity 32, no. 6 (2008): 992-1000.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Buchman, D. Z., et al., “Neurobiological Narratives: Experiences of Mood Disorder Through the Lens of Neuroimaging,” Sociology of Health & Illness 35, no. 1 (2013): 66-81.Google Scholar