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Hotel employees’ occupational stigma is often overlooked. Exploration of hotel employees’ occupational stigma representations, perception pathways and destigmatization provides an empirical basis for positive organizational behavior and psychology in the hotel industry. Therefore, this study aims to better understand the mechanism underlying inherent of occupational stigma.

This study adopts a five-factor narrative analysis involving stigma narrative interviews with a purposed sampling of hotel employees (n = 18). Based on occupational stigma and resource conservation theories, this study designed a five-factor narrative analysis structure chart as the basis for data analysis.

Findings indicate the existence of four quadrants of perceived occupational stigma attribute distribution, two paths of perceived occupational stigma formation and a more systematic occupational destigmatization mechanism path.

The occupational destigmatization path and countermeasures proposed in this study can resolve talent drain and eliminate stereotyping in the hotel industry, which promote the industry’s rapid recovery and sustainable healthy development, providing the practical management guidelines for public communication via social media, and offer practical significance for existing hotel human resource management in modules such as organizational culture and training.

This study broadens investigations of occupational stigma in a single, static context and explains the relationship between hotel employees’ stigma perceptions and destigmatization paths. Further, the mechanism of emotional energy distribution on spatial stigma was identified. These results have practical implications for organizational culture, training and employee care in hotel human resource management.

Goffman (1963) provided us with an explanation of the operation of stigma in microinteractional contexts. However, his definition and explication of the experiences and processes of stigmatization predate what many consider to be the most major shift in discourse and categorization to develop in the twentieth century – the rise of the language of risk. In this chapter, I discuss the intersections of risk discourse and stigma. Drawing on my empirical research with families affected by incarceration, I illustrate the shift toward structural stigma as an exercise of power and governance. I argue that contemporary “common-sense” understandings and usage of the term stigma emphasize negative individual interactions while ignoring the ways that risk categorizations, even in seemingly benign contexts, create structural disadvantage and serve to “other” stigmatized individuals. Singular focus on stigma at the microinteractional level, particularly in destigmatization campaigns, obscures the pervasive structural stigma couched in the language of risk management that permits systematic marginalization.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the perceptions of private and public sector managers in Barbados regarding the concepts of mental health and illness at work. It also explored their interactions and experiences with persons with mental illness at work and various forms of support and resources needed to improve the overall management of these persons within the organisational setting.

This qualitative study used an exploratory research design based on two focus groups of private and public sector managers.

The findings revealed that both private and public sector managers understood the distinction between the concepts of mental health and mental illness. However, managers believed that high levels of stigma and discrimination exist in both private and public sector workplaces due to a lack of understanding of mental illness, cultural norms, and socialisation in Barbados regarding mental illness and negative stereotypes. However, workplace education and promotion, associated workplace policies, and employee assistance programmes (EAPs) were identified as key strategies for effectively addressing issues of mental health stigma and the management of persons with mental illness at work.

Due to the qualitative approach used and small sample selected based on non-probability sampling, generalising the findings to larger populations is heavily cautioned.

Organisations in both private and public sectors should emphasise workplace mental health interventions such as mental health education and awareness, the development and implementation of supportive and flexible policies, and EAPs. These strategies are likely to help destigmatisation efforts and enhance managers’ understanding of mental health and the management of persons with mental illness.

This study provided a rich and in-depth understanding of mental health and illness from the perspective of private and public sector managers in a small developing country in the Caribbean. The Caribbean region possesses a dearth of empirical research concerning issues of mental health and illness at work.

The role of gender in psychiatric disorders is not well understood, but several broad trends are known: while men and women experience psychiatric symptoms at roughly the same rate, women are more likely to experience depressive symptoms (Kessler et al., 1993) and men are more likely to experience substance use disorders (DHHS, 1999). However, women are more likely to use primary care services for mental health care than are men (Wells et al., 1986). Equally controversial and not well understood has been the differential responses to treatment interventions by gender (Kornstein, 1997). One recent study found that a depression intervention was more cost-effective for women than for men (Pyne et al., in press). Indeed, the study found that the intervention was essentially cost and outcome neutral for men, while women were found to have a cost-effectiveness ratio of over $5000 for each QALY saved.

Purpose – This chapter critically examines efforts to destigmatize addiction through the creation of a diagnostic category and medicalization. It further critiques “realist” accounts of neuro-scientific knowledge, proposing instead a “biocultural” framework that enables a more multifaceted understanding of drug problems that leads back to questions of biopolitics.

Methodology/approach – After showing that medicalization is not always associated with destigmatization, this chapter reviews evidence suggesting that the social class of drug users is central to questions of stigma. A literature review concerning social constructionist approaches to bodies is then offered, culminating in an exploration of “biocultural” frames and their implications for psychiatric knowledge.

Findings – The material world can only be grasped through a cultural frame, an understanding that challenges “realist” accounts of knowledge. While making reference to brain functioning, psychiatric “disorders” in fact identify violations of interpersonal or psychic norms. These violations cannot be linked in a linear way to patterns of brain activity, even at a theoretical level.

Social implications – This chapter points toward a way of analyzing psychiatric disorders that allows for and highlights their political effects. Without ruling out medical interventions, it suggests that clinical and social understandings are an essential component of psychiatric understanding.

Originality/value of chapter – While “biocultural” approaches have been proposed by other social theorists, this chapter applies the frame in new ways to the psychiatric endeavor. In the face of increasing medicalization within the field of psychiatry, this chapter makes a strong theoretical case concerning the value of clinical and social knowledge concerning psychiatric disorders.

The purpose of this study is to develop a bottom-up segmentation of people affected by neurodiversity using Twitter data.

This exploratory study uses content analysis of information shared by Twitter users over a three-month period.

Cultural currents affect how the label of “neurodiversity” is perceived by individuals, marketplace actors and society. The extent to which neurodiversity provides a positive or negative alternative to stigmatizing labels for mental disorders is shaped by differentiated experiences of neurodiversity. The authors identify five neurodiversity segments according to identifiable concerns and contextual dynamics that affect mental wellbeing. Analyzing Twitter data enables a bottom-up typology of stigmatized groups toward improving market salience.

To the authors knowledge, this study is the first to investigate neurodiversity using Twitter data to segment stigmatized consumers into prospective customers from the bottom-up.

This paper aims to demonstrate the confluence of thinking across several areas, in their critique of modernity, with potential solutions in the mental health field.

The paper uses case and organisational examples related to relevant theory and clinical practice to demonstrate relevant contradictions and paradoxes in “modernised” mental health care. This is based on the author's experience as a public sector psychiatrist specialising in “personality disorder” to lead a government programme of new service developments in the field.

Modern methods of management, focusing on measurement, prediction and control – in the service of efficiency and economy – are not sufficient to meet the needs of a population with high incidence of “personality disorder”. A major change of attitude is required, to an authentic biopsychosocial approach, including spiritual and other non‐verbal considerations.

Hitherto, research has not combined these elements in a way that has made it easy to capture and analyse them. New methodologies and paradigms may be called for.

Mental health care should not be considered an entirely rational process that can be measured and manualised; considerations of how to better manage complexity and uncertainty are urgently needed.

Destigmatisation and normalisation of mental distress and “illness” should occur.

The paper introduces two new terms to mental health discourse: “greencare” and “biopsychosocialism”.

Celebrity endorsement is common in the marketing communications context, especially in the Asian market. Thanks to the popularity of online DIY celebrities, many marketing communications practitioners have started to involve such celebrities in brand and product endorsement strategies. However, few existing studies have compared the endorsement persuasiveness of online DIY celebrity endorsers with traditional celebrity endorsers, particularly in the Asian market. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to fill the literature gap by examining how consumers perceive and evaluate online DIY and traditional celebrity endorsers.

In-depth personal interviews were conducted with 15 interviewees with a median age of 23. They were asked to report their overall evaluations and attitudes toward online DIY celebrity endorsers and traditional celebrity endorsers, and their respective endorsement strategies.

Although the popularity of online DIY celebrities is growing in China, they received a lower level of appreciation from interviewees than traditional celebrities. The persuasiveness of online DIY celebrity endorsers was not as effective as that of traditional celebrity endorsers. Interviewees even held an overall negative attitude toward online DIY celebrities and their endorsements. Interviewees perceived traditional celebrity endorsers more positively, and their endorsements to be more effective, than online DIY celebrity endorsers.

The small sample size may constrain any generalization to be drawn from the findings. Future studies are suggested using survey and experiment methodology to further test and compare the persuasiveness of online DIY and traditional celebrity endorsement.

We suggest communications practitioners continue to use traditional celebrities to improve overall brand image and enhance the target audience’s purchase intention as the exploratory study reveals that audiences have an overall positive experience with traditional celebrities, instead of online DIY celebrities. If online DIY celebrities are preferred in communications strategies, we suggest practitioners carefully select qualified online DIY celebrity endorsers based on image congruence between such online DIY celebrities and the product category in that audiences in the exploratory study are quite cautious when exposed to product endorsement messages from online DIY celebrities. Besides this, audiences have more confidence in product endorsement if there is a fit between online DIY celebrities’ expertise and the endorsed product type.

This is the first qualitative study on consumers’ perception of product endorsement at the level of online DIY and traditional celebrity endorsers.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the oral health care experiences of people living with HIV in Kwazulu-Natal (KZN) and the Western Cape (WC) and also to identify the role of stigma and discrimination in the oral health care experiences for people living with HIV in KZN and the WC.

This study was a survey among HIV-positive people attending selected Community Health Centres and regional hospitals, HIV clinics in KZN and WC provinces in South Africa. The sample consisted of people living with HIV that were 18 years or older and who had given written, informed consent. A cross-sectional study structure has been employed using a standardized format using a semi-structured interview and an administered questionnaire to collect data. The study classified participants as living in metropolitan or non-metropolitan areas.

Apprehension of loss of confidentiality, stigma and discrimination were the barriers that deterred participants from seeking care. Respondents stated that they feared what the dentist and staff would think of them being HIV positive and feared being discriminated against by the dentist and staff. In some instances there appears to be a difference between policy and practice regarding the oral health care needs of and services rendered to people living with HIV in public health facilities as there are still patients who do not obtain care and for whom the attitudes of the health care provider constitutes the major barrier to accessing that care.

The results are specific to KZN and WC and have to be extrapolated with caution to the rest of South Africa. Additionally, this study did not have a control group of HIV-negative people which would have enabled one to determine whether certain barriers were unique to people living with HIV.

To make recommendations with respect to addressing the issue of stigma and discrimination in the oral health care experiences for people living with HIV in KZN and the WC as there is a definite need for the government to address the resource needs of rural areas and less developed areas of South Africa. Health care is a much-needed resource in these high prevalence areas and governments must ensure that all their HIV/AIDS projects and policies should have a rural component built into them.

This study emphasizes the importance of embracing people that are being discriminated and marginalized by society such as people living with HIV to ensure that they feel a franchised member of society who can take the initiative to be in control of their own health and, with the necessary aid from public resources and societal support, join forces to reduce the public health burden and its impact on the socio-economic milieu.

To the best of the author's knowledge, there is no other study that has compared differences in the use of oral health care services by people with HIV in South Africa and these results serve as an indication of some the important issues in this regard.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the value of clinical genetic diagnostics in the lives of people with an intellectual disability (ID), their families, and their primary and professional caregivers. It has been shown that psychologists are more likely to make use of the opportunities offered by clinical genetic diagnostics if they have seen the psychological benefits in their own practice. Moreover, this paper aims to promote the practice of informing people with ID, their families, and other caregivers regarding the current technological advances in genetic diagnostics, thereby allowing these patients to decide for themselves whether to utilise these opportunities.

The authors report four case studies in which the psychosocial value to each patient is pivotal.

In these four cases, it is clear the medical model can augment the social model by providing an interpretation of its meaningfulness in the lives of the people concerned.

Case studies alone can have limited scientific significance. This approach examining the significance of clinical genetic diagnosis should be studied further in larger groups.

It is hoped that psychologists and other professional caregivers will become enthused about the value of clinical genetic diagnostics and will choose to discuss the option of referral for clinical genetic diagnostics with their patients more often.

People with an ID who are seeking mental health care, and their caregivers, should be given the opportunity to take part in the decision regarding whether to use clinical genetic diagnostics, which may even have a destigmatising effect.

Quality of life may improve for people with an ID seeking mental healthcare and for their caregivers as well by opening up discussion regarding the opportunities presented by clinical genetic diagnostics. The fact that people are able to make their own choices based on their own considerations can have a destigmatising effect.