Group-Focused Enmity, Knowledge And Acquaintanceship: How Do They Influence Stigma Towards People With Schizophrenia?

Description

Heitmeyer (2007) defines the concept of „Group-Focused Enmity” as willingness to marginalize and exclude not only individuals but groups as a whole. Group-Focused Enmity is seen as a result of rising disorientation. Being in a precarious position leads to more Group-Focused Enmity to compensate for a lack of societal recognition which goes along with a higher readiness to discriminate weak groups (e.g. people with disabilities, non-established people, etc.). Contact hypothesis (Allport 1954) suggests that contact with members of a certain group may reduce prejudice. Congruently – regarding people with mental illnesses – increasing interpersonal contacts as well as knowledge are most commonly used anti-stigma strategies (Corrigan et al 2001; Gronholm et al 2016). We therefore ask 1. Which influences can be found on Group-Focused Enmity especially against people with mental illnesses? 2. How is Group-Focused Enmity related to stigmatizing people with schizophrenia? 3. How does general knowledge about mental illnesses and acquaintanceship with people suffering from mental illnesses affect this relation? We use survey data among the Austrian population out of the project “Monitoring Public Stigma Austria 2018” to approach these issues. Literature Allport, G. W. (1954). The nature of prejudice. Oxford: Addison-Wesley. Heitmeyer, W. (Eds.) (2007). Deutsche Zustände. Folge 5. Frankfurt: suhrkamp. Corrigan P.W., River L.P., Lundin R.K. et al. (2001). Three strategies for changing attributions about severe mental illness. Schizophr Bull 27:187–195. Gronholm et al. (2016). Interventions to reduce discrimination and stigma: the state of the art. Social psychiatry and psychiatric epidemiology 52 (3): 249-258.

Period	22 Aug 2019
Event title	14th Conference of the European Sociological Association Europe and Beyond: Boundaries, Barriers and Belonging
Event type	Conference
Location	United KingdomShow on map