Online Program

Oral

This Special Session is designed to provide context for, and help launch, the next generation of mental health stigma research, policy, and program development. Speakers will offer insights into ‘legacy’ and current conceptual and methodological issues in stigma research. Three presentations offer an overview of the pathways used to mount stigma research, including methodological challenges and solutions; a new and novel framework to help us understand the impact of culture on stigma, and the impact of self-disclosure on the stigma of mental illness. Examples will be offered showing how research has anchored the design of innovative mental health/ stigma reduction programs.

Session Objectives: Define and differentiate measures of mental illness stigma, Compare past and current knowledge in stigma research and describe findings that address key issues Describe self-stigma and its deleterious consequences. Explain how self-disclosure may erase the stigma of mental illness Discuss how ‘personhood’ facilitates the identification and prediction of stigma’s cultural effects.