Self-stigma

In my meanderings on the internet—trying to bring something fresh and new to our discussions—I came across self-stigma.

Self-stigma is how people with HIV regard themselves and what they conceive is the public perception of people living with HIV, in other words someone experiencing self-stigma will have negative feelings, self-hatred, blame, especially when they are first diagnosed. This reaction is in line with the way they think society responds to people with HIV —they project or impose on themselves what they think society thinks.

Stigma is dependent on the person who is stigmatised caring about what other people think. If they care that other people have negative attitudes, they will do things like for example take their medication in secret, go to furthest ARV clinic where no one knows them. The process of stigma involves the stigmatiser fearing becoming the type of person they dislike and the stigmatised feeling shame. Stigma differs from discrimination in that discrimination is overt…its seen, for example refusing to sit next to someone with HIV while stigma is a belief (a misguided belief) that influences behaviour.

Researchers have found that people with stigmatising attitudes are three times less likely to get tested for HIV, i.e. people who frown on, despise and consider people who have HIV as being bad, deviant or foolish are less likely to get tested themselves. These people are more likely to be male and have dangerous beliefs about HIV such as having sex with a virgin cures Aids.

Similarly, people who hold strong beliefs that HIV is caused by supernatural forces are more likely to believe that people with HIV are weak and or are being punished. People with self-stigma are less likely to disclose their status to their partner or their family. Disclosure is always difficult but it is made even harder if the person with HIV has negative views of HIV. This is anticipated stigma, the feeling that other people will hold similar negative views of yourself as you have of yourself.

People with self-stigma fear people gossiping about them, the disguised shameful looks, the whispers. They tend to pull away from friends and family because they assume other people hold negative views of them, which is not always the case. People with self-stigma over stigmatise so, for example, if 10 percent of society think people with HIV are ‘unclean’ then people with self stigma will think about themselves being ‘unclean’ by 20 to 30 percent.

The Malawi Network of People Living with HIV and Aids published a study of stigma in Malawi. They found that close to 40 percent blamed themselves for their HIV status, over a third felt they should be punished and a quarter felt guilty for being HIV positive. A third felt fear of being gossiped about and a fifth feared sexual rejection.

Stigma has a very toxic grip on people. It is a mindset. To help people with self-stigma, they should ask of themselves whether their beliefs are true, how they know they are true, how they react when believing they are true, and who they would be if they didn’t believe they were true. Finally, explore the opposite belief…the belief that HIV is not bad, you are not a victim and you are not being punished.