Internalized stigma is a pervasive phenomenon commonly endured by people with mental health conditions. It typically refers to the degree to which individuals vulnerable to stigma internalize negative social stereotypes, believe them to be true of themselves, and experience self-devaluation as a result. Although this phenomenon has been increasingly explored in the empirical literature, the philosophical exploration of the models developed remains scarce. To address this gap, I provide a conceptual analysis of the dominant empirical models in internalized stigma in mental health, exploring how unexamined conceptual assumptions generate inconsistent understandings of the phenomenon. More precisely, I demonstrate that these models inadvertently disagree on two fundamental aspects: first, different authors may consider additional features besides the acceptance of public stereotypes and the resulting self-devaluation, thereby diverging in the necessary and sufficient conditions they specify for what counts as internalized stigma; and second, they disagree on how to characterize the phenomenology of self-devaluation.
Activities > Graduate Research Seminar (GRSem) > GRSem: On what we mean (more or less) by internalized stigma
