Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Feb;34(1):79-93.
doi: 10.1002/cbm.2326. Epub 2024 Jan 11.

Self-stigma of incarceration and its impact on health and community integration

Affiliations

Self-stigma of incarceration and its impact on health and community integration

Chelsea E Brehmer et al. Crim Behav Ment Health. 2024 Feb.

Abstract

Background: Individuals returning to the wider community from incarceration face many re-entry barriers, including stigmatising beliefs regarding past criminal record, that have impact on health and re-entry. Understanding the development and impact of self-stigma on health can inform re-entry and rehabilitation services.

Aims: The two aims of this study were first, to evaluate a previously established model of self-stigma applied to individuals who have experienced incarceration and, secondly, to study the impact of self-stigma on physical and mental health as well as community integration on re-entry.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional study of 129 formerly incarcerated adults recruited using an online platform and asked to complete online rating scales about self-stigmatisation, health and sense of community integration. Repeated-measures analysis of variance, correlation analysis, and path analyses were used to evaluate the model.

Results: There was support for the four distinct stages of self-stigmatisation apparent in mental health research. There was a relationship between self-stigma harm and sense of community integration, mediated by mental but not physical health status scores.

Conclusion: Our findings add to work on self-stigmatisation in the field of mental health by showing that the concept appears relevant and appears in similar staging among formerly incarcerated individuals and that self-stigmatisation is likely to be important for their community reintegration. Our sample was not typical of the wider prison population for race and gender distribution, in particular having fewer than expected those minority groups likely to be especially vulnerable to stigmatisation by others. Our findings nevertheless suggest that further, preferably, longitudinal research on self-stigma to enable better understanding of pathways could substantially help treatment and rehabilitation of individuals after release from a correctional facility.

Keywords: community integration; incarceration; mental health; re-entry; self-stigma.

PubMed Disclaimer

References

REFERENCES

    1. Alexander, M. (2010). The new Jim Crow: Mass incarceration in the age of color blindness. The New Press.
    1. Barnert, E., Sun, A., Abrams, L. S., & Chung, P. J. (2020). Physical health, medical care access, and medical insurance coverage of youth returning home after incarceration: A systematic review. Journal of Correctional Health Care, 26(2), 113-128. https://doi.org/10.1177/1078345820915908
    1. Ben-Moshe, L. (2020). Decarcerating disability: Deinstitutionalization and prison abolition. University of Minnesota Press.
    1. Corrigan, P. W., Bink, A. B., Schmidt, A., Jones, N., & Rüsch, N. (2016). What is the impact of self-stigma? Loss of self-respect and the “why try” effect. Journal of Mental Health, 25(1), 10-15. https://doi.org/10.3109/09638237.2015.1021902
    1. Corrigan, P. W., Michaels, P. J., Vega, E., Gause, M., Watson, A. C., & Rüsch, N. (2012). Self-stigma of mental illness scale-Short form: Reliability and validity. Psychiatry Research, 199(1), 65-69. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2012.04.009

LinkOut - more resources