The influence of stigma on depression, overall psychological distress, and somatization among female Turkish migrants.

CONCLUSION: The positive relationships between stigma, depression, and overall psychological distress indicate that patients who are more depressed and who have higher levels of overall psychological distress experience their condition as more stigmatizing. Since somatic symptoms and stigma were not related (neither positively, nor negatively), it appears that depressive symptoms and other symptoms of psychological distress affect concerns about stigmatizing attitudes in a way that somatic symptoms do not. This result challenges common assumption of the 'somatization'hypothesis, i.e. that depression is 'somatized'because of concern about stigmatizing attitudes. PMID: 22863246 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Source: Journal of the Association of European Psychiatrists - Category: Psychiatry Tags: Eur Psychiatry Source Type: research