Stigma Spring 2022

  Miss Gee Let me tell you a little story About Miss Edith Gee; She lived in Clevedon Terrace At number 83. She'd a slight squint in her left eye, Her lips they were thin and small, She had narrow sloping shoulders And she had no bust at all. She'd a velvet hat with trimmings, And a dark grey serge costume; She lived in Clevedon Terrace In a small bed-sitting room. She'd a purple mac for wet days, A green umbrella too to take, She'd a bicycle with shopping basket And a harsh back-pedal break. The Church of Saint Aloysius Was not so very far; She did a lot of knitting, Knitting for the Church Bazaar. Miss Gee looked up at the starlight And said, 'Does anyone care That I live on Clevedon Terrace On one hundred pounds a year?' She dreamed a dream one evening That she was the Queen of France And the Vicar of Saint Aloysius Asked Her Majesty to dance. But a storm blew down the palace, She was biking t...

 example of multiple stigma  STIGMA OF MENTAL ILLNESS FOR BLACK YOUTH RACE, ILLNESS (Cancer), SEXUALITY, OBESITY Published in 1980, this a chronicle of poet Audre Lorde’s experience with breast cancer. She began writing journal entries a few months after her mastectomy.Lorde's eventually died from a recurrence of breast cancer. When The Cancer Journals was published in 1980, Audre Lorde was already an important feminist poet. She had often criticized the popular feminist movement for focusing exclusively on white women, and she insisted on talking about race and class as compounding forms of oppression (STIGMA), including the racist assumptions white women brought to their feminism. Audre Lorde asks in The Cancer Journals where she can find a model of how to deal with cancer, an understanding or a guide. She also questions Western medicine and asserts that women should control their own health and healing. Race & Stigma: Racial stigma and inequality The concept of an endur...

 In 1978 Susan Sontag wrote  Illness as Metaphor , a classic work described by  Newsweek  as "one of the most liberating books of its time." A cancer patient herself when she was writing the book, Sontag shows  how the metaphors and myths surrounding certain illnesses, especially cancer, add greatly to the suffering of patients and often inhibit them from seeking proper treatment. By demystifying the fantasies surrounding cancer, Sontag shows cancer for what it is -- just a disease.  Cancer, she argues, is not a curse, not a punishment, certainly not an embarrassment  and, it is highly curable, if good treatment is followed. "Susan Sontag's  Illness as Metaphor  was the  first to point out the accusatory side of the metaphors of empowerment that seek to enlist the patient's will to resist disease.  It is largely as a result of her work that the how-to health books avoid the blame-ridden term  'cancer personality'  and spea...

  The Stigma of Dementia!    (click here for PDF) Kinds of Stigma Self Stigma Public Stigma Courtesy Stigma all apply to our understanding of Alzheimers and dementia. Link & Phelan: Condistions for stigmatization labeling stereotyping seapration status loss discrimination Does Diagnosis help or hurt? The Negative consequences of labeling  Step 1: Diagnosis internalization of negative cultural images (dangerous, incompetant) Step 2: Defensive Behaviors expect others to reject them so they act in order to prevent this Double Whammy! Stigma and Old Age cognitively impaired (decision making impaired) crazy!!!! (mental illness) physically frail old fashioned grumpy cheap unattractive dying/decline dependence loss of sexuality Stress Related Stigma stress of stigmatization can lead to other stress related illnesses stress can increase symptomology of dementia focus on scary late stages of dementia fear of institutionalization courtesy stigma and family problems Alzheim...