Tag: stigma

Weight stigma negatively impacts mental and physical health

We talked about weight stigma in General Psychology a week or so ago. A good article in the NY Times illustrates the depth of the problem. A new study by a social psychology graduate student, Jeffrey Hunger, at UC Santa Barbara finds:

those who were overweight or obese were more likely to report problems like depression, anxiety, substance abuse and low self-esteem if they had experienced weight-based discrimination in the past.

It also includes a quote from a professor of popular culture, Courtney Bailey:

fat stigma intensified after 9/11, when Americans’ sense of vulnerability translated into increased animosity toward the fat body

This echoes some research we did in Mark Shcaller’s lab at UBC where it was found that perceived vulnerability to disease was correlated with anti-fat prejudice.

Link to the article: Is Fat Stigma Making Us Miserable? – The New York Times.

Personalizing Mental Illness

In Stereotyping and Prejudice, we just finished studying stigma, and mental illness is heavily stigmatized. A recent article in the NY Times is about a project to use oral history to help personalize the experience of mental illness. As we studied, the more you can provide individuating information, the more stereotypes can be weakened in person perception.

One thing I learned was that as soon as you mentioned the word, people stopped seeing the person. They just saw the diagnosis and a collection of symptoms.

Link to the article in the NY Times Well blog.