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 34,133 document(s) hit in 31,850,051 MEDLINE articles (0.00 seconds)

Research which deals with beliefs and feelings about cancer suggests that cancer is somewhat unique among chronic illnesses with respect to the intensity of negative feelings and stigma attached to this disease. The research results to date fit well in the context of the health belief model and indicate that cancer is extremely high in perceived severity, moderate in perceived susceptibility, and extremely low in perceived benefits of preventive and treatment programs. This paper reports the results of a study which used the semantic differential technique to determine a sample of seventh-grade students' perceptions of cancer in comparison to heart disease, diabetes, and mental illness. The results indicated that children generally view cancer as higher in severity (except for heart disease), higher in susceptibility, and lower in benefits of treatment than the other illnesses. Perceptions did not differ by sex, socio-economic background, or knowledge of cancer. However, in addition to perceiving cancer as being very high in severity and feeling pessimistic about the chances of recovering, black children believe they are personally more susceptible than do white children. In general, this combination of perceptions provides a unique stigma to cancer as a fearsome chronic disease with little hope of cure. The low perceived benefits of treatment presents a barrier to action which has important implications for health education programs.
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PMID:Children's perceptions of cancer in comparison to other chronic illnesses. 714 63

Health practitioners (N = 665) from the Chinese, Italian, German, Greek, Arabic and Anglo Australian communities used social distance scales to rate the attitudes of people in their communities toward 20 disability groups. Significant differences were found in community attitudes toward people with 19 of these disabilities. Overall the German community expressed greatest acceptance of people with disabilities, followed by the Anglo, Italian, Chinese, Greek and Arabic groups. However the relative degree of stigma attached to the various disabilities by the communities was very similar. In all communities, people with asthma, diabetes, heart disease and arthritis were the most, and people with AIDS, mental retardation, psychiatric illness and cerebral palsy, the least accepted of the disability groups. These stigma hierarchies were remarkably similar to other hierarchies reported over the last 23 years. The findings have important implications for people with disabilities and health practitioners in multicultural societies.
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PMID:Attitudes towards disabilities in a multicultural society. 845 31

In the mid-1980s, research reported that people living with HIV were viewed differently on measures of competence, dependence, morbidity, depression, and moral worth from those living with other chronic illnesses. 443 students were surveyed to evaluate present attitudes in comparison to this earlier research. The usefulness of imaginal exposure, i.e., imagining a loved one living with HIV, in reducing stigma toward people with HIV was also investigated. Analysis indicated no difference in the rating of AIDS and cancer patients on measures of competence, depression, and morbidity and patients with heart disease, the latter being rated significantly less competent and more depressed than AIDS or cancer patients. AIDS patients were rated significantly less dependent than cancer and heart disease patients. While these results suggest that stigma associated with an HIV/AIDS diagnosis, in general, may have decreased over the years, ratings of moral worth were still lower for AIDS patients than for patients with cancer and heart disease. Robustness of this specific aspect of stigma may be associated with sexual prejudice. Also, an imagined loved one who lives with HIV was rated significantly more favorably on all 5 composite scales than a generic person living with HIV, suggesting the usefulness of exposure as an intervention for attitude change. Limitations of the research are discussed.
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PMID:Stigma directed toward chronic illness is resistant to change through education and exposure. 1215 Apr 1

In Maryland, the Governor's Task Force on AIDS (acquired immunodeficiency syndrome) has recommended that insurance companies be permitted to require applicants for insurance to be tested for AIDS exposure and to ask applicants whether they have been tested previously for the virus. The task force also voted to advise the state insurance commissioner to prohibit companies from keeping records of those who test positive or passing their names on to the insurance industry's centralized computer bank. The insurance industry fears that companies may suffer enormous losses if they are unable to screen out those most likely to get the fatal disease. They say insurers simply want to be able to judge the risk of illness or death for insurance applicants, just as they would with tests for cancer, heart disease, or diabetes. But some AIDS specialists point out that widespread use of the AIDS exposure test may make it impossible for a large class of Americans to get insurance. They say AIDS testing carries far greater social stigma than other medical information, so that if the names of those testing positive are not kept strictly confidential, they may face discrimination in employment and housing as well. With fears of discrimination in mind, California has banned use of the test for insurance purposes and other states, including Maryland, are currently debating such a step. But several large insurance companies have warned that they may simply stop selling insurance in states where they are not permitted to use the test. A positive blood test for AIDS exposure, which detects antibodies to the AIDS virus, does not indicate that a person has the fatal disease. But scientists believe that at least 5 to 34% of those testing positive will ultimately get AIDS. Life insurance experts told the task force that a positive test for AIDS in a 30 year old man increases his annual risk of dying by 14 to 57 times -- so high that most companies will not write life insurance for such a person.
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PMID:Md. panel backs insurers on testing for AIDS virus. 1226 75

Obesity is an epidemic disease that threatens to inundate health care resources by increasing the incidence of diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, and cancer. These effects of obesity result from two factors: the increased mass of adipose tissue and the increased secretion of pathogenetic products from enlarged fat cells. This concept of the pathogenesis of obesity as a disease allows an easy division of disadvantages of obesity into those produced by the mass of fat and those produced by the metabolic effects of fat cells. In the former category are the social disabilities resulting from the stigma associated with obesity, sleep apnea that results in part from increased parapharyngeal fat deposits, and osteoarthritis resulting from the wear and tear on joints from carrying an increased mass of fat. The second category includes the metabolic factors associated with distant effects of products released from enlarged fat cells. The insulin-resistant state that is so common in obesity probably reflects the effects of increased release of fatty acids from fat cells that are then stored in the liver or muscle. When the secretory capacity of the pancreas is overwhelmed by battling insulin resistance, diabetes develops. The strong association of increased fat, especially visceral fat, with diabetes makes this consequence particularly ominous for health care costs. The release of cytokines, particularly IL-6, from the fat cell may stimulate the proinflammatory state that characterizes obesity. The increased secretion of prothrombin activator inhibitor-1 from fat cells may play a role in the procoagulant state of obesity and, along with changes in endothelial function, may be responsible for the increased risk of cardiovascular disease and hypertension. For cancer, the production of estrogens by the enlarged stromal mass plays a role in the risk for breast cancer. Increased cytokine release may play a role in other forms of proliferative growth. The combined effect of these pathogenetic consequences of increased fat stores is an increased risk of shortened life expectancy.
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PMID:Medical consequences of obesity. 1518 Oct 27

As revealed by a quality-of-life survey done in a small rural Kentucky cohort, adults who live in rural areas who have congenital heart disease have a relatively poor health-related quality of life and face unique challenges in gaining employment, maintaining health insurance, and overcoming the perceived childhood stigma of being "different."
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PMID:Quality of life and social outcomes in adults with congenital heart disease living in rural areas of Kentucky. 1524 20

Mental disorders cause more disability than any other class of medical illness in Americans between ages 15 and 44 years. The suicide rate is higher than the annual mortality from homicide, AIDS, and most forms of cancer. In contrast to nearly all communicable and most non-communicable diseases, there is little evidence that the morbidity and mortality from mental disorders have changed in the past several decades. Mental health advocates, including psychiatric researchers, have pointed to stigma as one of the reasons for the lack of progress with mental illnesses relative to other medical illnesses. This review considers how the expectations and goals of the research community have contributed to this relative lack of progress. In contrast to researchers in cancer and heart disease who have sought cures and preventions, biological psychiatrists in both academia and industry have set their sights on incremental and marketable advances, such as drugs with fewer adverse effects. This essay argues for approaches that can lead to cures and strategies for prevention of schizophrenia and mood disorders.
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PMID:Cure therapeutics and strategic prevention: raising the bar for mental health research. 1635 50

This article explored the notion that media depictions of health concerns come in one of two formats: challenge and stigma. After explicating the five features that should appear in challenge format and the seven features of stigma formats, we analyzed the content of health messages in magazines, brochures, and posters (n = 75) in a metropolitan area. The results of a two-factor confirmatory factor model showed that the five suggested features for challenge formats did, indeed, appear together (alpha = .76), and the seven features for stigma formats, also, appeared together (alpha = .90), and showed no residual relationship. In other words, the results suggest that media depictions of health topics appear in either challenge or stigma formats (r = - .87). Health issues appearing in magazine advertisements and articles presented messages in challenge formats, while brochures and posters from largely nonprofit and government groups depicted health issues in stigma formats. Some health topics appeared most often in challenge formats (including cancer, heart disease, and scoliosis), while others appeared in stigma formats (including tuberculosis, hepatitis, smoking, and sexually transmitted diseases [STDs]). Findings suggest that media depictions of health differ, and the implications of stigma and challenge formats are discussed.
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PMID:Media depictions of health topics: challenge and stigma formats. 1749 78

The epidemiology and demographics of human immunodeficiency virus/acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (HIV/AIDS) have evolved over the last 25 years in the United States to include more women and minority populations, especially Latinos and African Americans. In addition, there has been a shift in HIV/AIDS cases from large northeastern and western metropolitan areas to persons living in rural areas and the south. The reasons for the changes and the shift are unclear, but major barriers to primary prevention strategies are most likely sociocultural. This article reviews some of the sociocultural barriers in HIV/AIDS prevention and presents a new approach or framework for addressing these barriers. The framework highlights Stigma, Fear, and Denial as barriers in interventions for HIV/AIDS targeted at African Americans living in rural Alabama. The framework uses a culturally competent, community-based approach. It is hoped that this framework could also be used as a model for addressing HIV/AIDS in other communities, as well as addressing other health disparities where stigma, fear, and denial may play a role, such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, immunizations, and infant mortality.
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PMID:Use of stigma, fear, and denial in development of a framework for prevention of HIV/AIDS in rural African American communities. 1787 38

We examined AIDS stigma among male inmates and male and female staff at a state prison in the southern region of the USA. Inmates and staff rated people with AIDS more negatively than someone with other diseases (diabetes, cancer, heart disease and high blood pressure). Inmates and staff were concerned about being treated differently if they tested seropositive. They also described AIDS stigma as a barrier to seeking HIV testing. Both instrumental (inaccurate beliefs about casual contact causing transmission of the virus) and symbolic factors (negative attitudes about injection drug use) predicted AIDS stigma. Negative attitudes about homosexuality predicted AIDS stigma among Caucasian prison staff and inmates, but not among African American staff and inmates. The results indicate the need to address HIV/AIDS stigma in developing HIV treatment, care and prevention programs in the prison environment.
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PMID:AIDS stigma among inmates and staff in a USA state prison. 1848 46


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