Abstract
Despite the prominence of shame in stigma theories, its role in explaining population-level mental-health disparities between the stigmatized and nonstigmatized has not been investigated. We assessed shame explicitly (via self-report) and implicitly (via a behavioral task) in a prospective, representative cohort of sexual-minority and heterosexual young adults in Sweden (baseline n = 2,222). Compared with heterosexuals, sexual minorities evidenced higher explicit and implicit shame, which explained sexual-orientation disparities in depression, social anxiety, and suicidal thoughts. Among sexual minorities, there was an indirect effect of shame in the association between interpersonal stigma (i.e., past-year family rejection and childhood bullying) and later experiences of adverse mental health; an indirect effect did not exist for the related construct, internalized stigma. Results suggest extending existing stigma theories to consider emotions such as shame as characteristic reactions to stigma and guide the search for treatment targets focused on reducing the mental-health sequelae of stigma.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
