Central to this volume, and critical to its unique creative significance and contribution, is the conceptual unification of syndemics and stigma. Syndemics theory is increasingly recognized in social science and medicine as a crucial framework for examining and addressing pathways of interaction between biological and social aspects of chronic and acute suffering in populations. While much research to date addresses known syndemics such as those involving HIV, diabetes, and mental illness, this book explores new directions just beginning to emerge in syndemics research - revealing what syndemics theory can illuminate about, for example the health consequences of socially pathologized pregnancy or infertility, when stigmatization of reproductive options or experiences affect women's health. In other chapters, newly identified syndemics affecting incarcerated or detained individuals are highlighted, demonstrating the physical, psychological, structural, and political-economic effects of stigmatizing legal frameworks on human health, through a syndemic lens. Elsewhere in the volume, scholars examine the stigma of poverty and how it affects both nutritional and oral health. The common thread across all chapters is linkages of social stigmatization, structural conditions, and how these societal forces drive biological and disease interactions affecting human health, in areas not previously explored through these lenses.
Central to this volume, and critical to its unique creative significance and contribution, is the conceptual unification of syndemics and stigma. Syndemics theory is increasingly recognized in social science and medicine as a crucial framework for examining and addressing pathways of interaction between biological and social aspects of chronic and acute suffering in populations. While much research to date addresses known syndemics such as those involving HIV, diabetes, and mental illness, this book explores new directions just beginning to emerge in syndemics research - revealing what syndemics theory can illuminate about, for example the health consequences of socially pathologized pregnancy or infertility, when stigmatization of reproductive options or experiences affect women's health. In other chapters, newly identified syndemics affecting incarcerated or detained individuals are highlighted, demonstrating the physical, psychological, structural, and political-economic effects of stigmatizing legal frameworks on human health, through a syndemic lens. Elsewhere in the volume, scholars examine the stigma of poverty and how it affects both nutritional and oral health. The common thread across all chapters is linkages of social stigmatization, structural conditions, and how these societal forces drive biological and disease interactions affecting human health, in areas not previously explored through these lenses.
Chapter 1: Abortion Complication Syndemics: Structural Stigma,
Pathologized Pregnancies, and Health Consequences of Constrained
Care
Chapter 2: The Syndemic of Endometriosis, Stress and Stigma
Chapter 3: Pathologized Bodies, Embodied Stress, and Deleterious
Birth Outcomes: Iatrogenic Effects of Teen Pregnancy Stigma
Chapter 4: The Multiple Stigmas of the PDI Syndemic: Poverty,
“Racial"/Ethnic Discrimination, Incarceration, and Reproductive and
Familial Risk
Chapter 5: Sickness in the Detention System: Syndemics of Mental
Distress, Malnutrition, and Immigration Stigma in the United
States
Chapter 6: Stigma Syndemic among People with Intellectual
Disability who have been Incarcerated
Chapter 7: Stigma as a Driving Force in the Basic Causes of
Malnutrition-Related Syndemics in Guatemala
Chapter 8: ‘Toothless Maw-maw can’t eat no more’: Stigma and
synergies of dental disease, diabetes, and psychosocial stress
among low-income rural Appalachians
Bayla Ostrach is research scientist at the Mountain Area Health
Education Center and appointed faculty in the Medical Anthropology
and Cross-Cultural Practice program (MACCP) at Boston University
School of Medicine.
Shir Lerman is post-doctoral fellow in Prevention and Control of
Cancer Training in Implementation Science (PRACCTIS) at the
University of Massachusetts Medical School.
Merrill Singer is professor in the Departments of Anthropology and
Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut and senior
research scientist at the University of Connecticut's Institute for
Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP).
This book unpacks how stigma—of abortion, menstruation,
incarceration, immigration, and poverty—cannot be detached from
structural vulnerabilities. Social-biological,
social-psychological, and biological-psychological interactions
exemplify how social experiences cannot be detached from syndemic
theory. In these cases, it is the social experience of exclusion
through stigmatization that systematically fuels isolation,
ostracization, and subjugation from which poor health
stems.
*Emily Mendenhall, Georgetown University*
Stigma Syndemics is a serious and long-overdue examination into one
of the most pernicious drivers of widespread affliction. The
contributors to this rare collection reveal how stigma in its many
forms sits at the center of numerous seemingly intractable
challenges. They also issue a clear mandate to overcome the
pervasive threat of stigma in its widest sense.
*Bobby Milstein, ReThink Health and Massachusetts Institute of
Technology*
This book reminds us of the power of stigma and its role as a cog
in syndemic interactions. Stigma serves to create and reinforce
‘the other.’ The crucial role of othering in exposing people to
risk, affecting their ability to disclose, limiting their access to
care, changing the nature of their care, and creating life long
suffering is well explored in this book through a series of case
studies. In this volume, authors demonstrate that conditions
we might consider as normal, e.g. pregnancy, or minor, such as
dental disease, are shown to be caught up in vicious cycles of
disease, blame and suffering. This book is a salutary reminder to
pay attention to trajectories of blame and that a focus on
syndemics allows for tracing the precise pathways of stigma and its
effects.
*Judith Littleton, University of Auckland*
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