Social Support, Empowerment, and Self-Stigma Among Family of People with Mental Illness

For decades, people with mental illness have been viewed as “abnormal people,” different from other people in the society. While they were stigmatized and discriminated against due to illness, their healthy family members shared the same stigmatized suffering due to no illness. Not only stigmatized from the public, their family members internally stigmatized themselves by experiencing shameful and guilt feelings, which affected their moods, withdrew themselves from the public, and devalued themselves as persons. This study intended to examine how empowerment and social support could buffer the feeling of stigmatization. The implications about practice and policy suggestions were included to discuss strategies of buffering the feeling of stigmatization or improving the feeling of empowerment.
A quantitative research approach was used to examine the relationship among stigmatization, social support, and empowerment. Structured survey questionnaire was used to interview family members of people with mental illness. This study purposively sampled five social welfare agencies, two half-way houses, one community rehabilitation center, and one public housing project in Taipei area. Some interviewees were recruited through the Internet and my own private network. Finally, as a total, 177 valid questionnaires were completed for further statistical analyses.
Findings included three parts. Regarding on the sense of family members’ empowerment, the bi-variant analyses study indicated the level of empowerment was higher in family members with higher educational level and higher family income level. And, the level of empowerment was found correlated with whether family members attended support group and how much people with mental illness helped with house chores. As for the self-stigma, the findings indicated that the level of self-stigma was higher in female family members and males with mental illness. When testing the relationship between the levels of empowerment and the level of self-stigma, the analysis indicated the two variables were strongly and negatively correlated. When the higher level of empowerment family members felt, the lower level of self-stigmatization family members felt. Finally, multi-variant analyses indicated that the lower level of self-stigmatization family members felt had to do with the higher level of empowerment, more helpers from the families, receiving more collaborative support from mental health professionals, and more assistance from people with mental illness. Based on the abovementioned findings, this study included practical strategies and policy suggestions as effective measures on buffering or reducing the level of self-stigmatization among family members who cared for people with mental illness.