Abstract

MOREIRA, Virginia  and  TELLES, Thabata Castelo Branco. Experiences of stigma in depression: a cross cultural study. PsicoUSF [online]. 2008, vol.13, n.2, pp. 233-241. ISSN 1413-8271.

From the research The meaning of depression in contemporary world: a critic-cultural study in Brazil, Chile and the United States (Moreira, 2007), one of the emerged categories in the phenomenological analyses of the interviews was the stigma. This article retakes this study, aiming to comprehend the lived experience of stigma in people diagnosed with depression in the three countries. It had been phenomenologically re-analyzed 51 interviews (n=15, in Fortaleza; n=20, in Santiago; n=16, in Boston). The results point peculiarities in each country, showing the qualitatively different content of the lived experience of stigma in depression in the three countries: only in Brazil it is mentioned the concern with how to avoid stigma; only in Chile, stigma is associated to guilt, shame and lack of privacy; and only in the United States, stigma is related to racism, which could be associated to cultural differences.

Keywords : Depression; Stigma; Cross-cultural; Phenomenology.

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