Stigma of mental illness is a major obstacle to its diagnosis and treatment and may be worse among Asians than Caucasians. This study compared the stigma of depression in 50 Chinese Americans (CA) and 50 Caucasian Americans (WA). Subjects were asked to read 5 case vignettes in the following order: diabetes mellitus (DB), major depressive disorder (MDD), somatoform depression (SD), psychotic depression (PD), and fever of unknown origin (HA). Diagnosis of each case was not revealed. Subjects then rated their response to each case, on a Likert scale from "strongly disagree" to "strongly agree," to 25 statements that contained 6 stigma factors: fear, shame, cognitive distortion, social consensus, discrimination, and sanction. Composite scores constructed from ratings of each factor were used to calculate the severity of stigma. Stigma of all 5 cases was worse in CA than WA. Both groups ranked DB and HA to be least and PD to be most stigmatizing. CA rated SD to be less stigmatizing than MDD but not WA. We concluded that stigma formation and severity were determined by fear, shame, cognitive distortion, social communication, consensus, and sanction. Mental symptoms, particularly psychotic symptoms, were more stigmatizing than physical symptoms, especially for CA. Belief that depression was like a physical illness did not diminish its stigma.
A growing number of 'return migrant children', who have lived in cities where they had access to the compulsory education system, are sent back to their rural hometowns to prepare for higher education in China. This study explores the resources that are available to return migrant students for further educational development and examines their difficulties with activating their educational capitals and translating them into human capital, in the form of academic knowledge and educational success after their remigration (a change in their field of practice). Using a framework based on the work of Bourdieu, this article conceptualizes the educational resources available to migrant families in terms of economic, social and cultural capitals. This article contributes to a better understanding of the transformation and deployment of educational capitals by revitalizing the importance of the concepts of 'habitus' and 'field' inherent in Bourdieu's work.
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