The stigma of schizophrenia from patients' and relatives' view: A pilot study in an Italian rehabilitation residential care unit.
OBJECTIVE
To identify the constituent elements of the stigma from the perspective of those having first-hand experiences of it.


METHODS
Subjective experiences of stigma were explored in six focus groups: three with people suffering from schizophrenia and three with patients' relatives. Focus group sessions were tape-recorded, transcribed and analyzed by means of an inductive method, forming categories from the texts, as a basis for coding. Analysis aimed at establishing a typology of stigmatization experiences from the spoken words of the focus group participants.


RESULTS
Four dimensions of stigma were identified: access to social roles; internalization of stigma; quality of mental health services, public image of mental illness.


CONCLUSIONS
The most frequently found topics concerned experiences of marginalization and discrimination that people with schizophrenia experience in their daily life. These results mirror the findings of similar studies obtained in other cultural contexts.
Buizza
Chiara
C
Clinical Psychology Section, Faculty of Medicine, University of Brescia, Brescia, Italy. buizza@med.unibs.it.
Schulze
Beate
B
Bertocchi
Elena
E
Rossi
Giuseppe
G
Ghilardi
Alberto
A
Pioli
Rosaria
R