A study from Hong Kong (Lee et al. 2005) and the international study of stigma by the INDIGO study group (Thornicroft et al. 2009) both provide large diagnosis-specific study of the experience of stigma by individuals with schizophrenia. The consistency of methodology in the INDIGO study allows for a rare comparison of stigma in different countries but despite the scale of the study, the authors acknowledge that they were not “able to investigate in any detail the complex features of stigma and discrimination that might apply in culture or context specific settings.”
This article reports on the first large-scale study examining to whom Americans with schizophrenia disclose their diagnosis, whether they experience positive, negative or neutral reactions to such disclosures and some specific consequences of prior disclosures.