Citation

Lin CY, Tsai MC, Liu CH, Lin YC, Hsieh YP, Strong C. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2019; 16(22): e16224410.

Affiliation

Department of Public Health, National Cheng Kung University Hospital, College of Medicine, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan 700, Taiwan.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2019, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/ijerph16224410

PMID

31718003

Abstract

The objective of this research was to examine the pathway from public stigma, to perceived stigma, to depression in adolescents via internalized stigma. Adolescents in grade 7 through 9 from a junior high school in Changhua County in Taiwan completed self-administered surveys from March to July in 2018. Adolescents were asked questions regarding depressive symptoms, obesity-related perceived stigma, and internalized stigma. Structural equation modeling was used to fit the pathway model. The pathway was first analyzed with the full sample and then stratified by actual and perceived weight status. Our final analytic sample consisted of 464 adolescents. The pathway model suggested an acceptable model fit. Perceived weight stigma (PWS) was significantly associated with internalized stigma regardless of actual or self-perceived weight status. Internalized stigma was significantly associated with anxiety for both actual (β = 0.186) and self-perceived nonoverweight (non-OW) participants (β = 0.170) but not for overweight (OW) participants (neither actual nor self-perceived). For OW adolescents, perceived weight stigma was associated with anxiety. However, the internalization process did not exist. It may be that the influence of perceived weight stigma is larger than internalized stigma on anxiety. It may also be that the level of internalization was not yet high enough to result in anxiety.

Language: en

Keywords

anxiety; internalized stigma; overweight; stigma