Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research

Original Article

The Public Stigma of Birth Mothers of Children with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders

Corresponding Author

Patrick W. Corrigan

[email protected]

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

Reprint requests: Patrick W. Corrigan, PsyD, 3424 South State St., First floor, Chicago, IL 60616; Tel.: 312-567-6751; Fax: 312-567-6753; E-mail: [email protected]Search for more papers by this author

Juana Lorena Lara,

Juana Lorena Lara

orcid.org/0000-0002-1149-6596

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

Search for more papers by this author

Binoy Biren Shah,

Binoy Biren Shah

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

Search for more papers by this author

Kathleen T. Mitchell,

Kathleen T. Mitchell

National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS), Washington, District of Columbia

Search for more papers by this author

Diana Simmes,

Diana Simmes

Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California

Search for more papers by this author

Kenneth L. Jones,

Kenneth L. Jones

Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California

Search for more papers by this author

Patrick W. Corrigan,

Corresponding Author

Patrick W. Corrigan

[email protected]

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

Juana Lorena Lara,

Juana Lorena Lara

orcid.org/0000-0002-1149-6596

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

Search for more papers by this author

Binoy Biren Shah,

Binoy Biren Shah

Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, Illinois

Search for more papers by this author

Kathleen T. Mitchell,

Kathleen T. Mitchell

National Organization on Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (NOFAS), Washington, District of Columbia

Search for more papers by this author

Diana Simmes,

Diana Simmes

Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California

Search for more papers by this author

Kenneth L. Jones,

Kenneth L. Jones

Department of Pediatrics, University of California, San Diego, La Jolla, California

Search for more papers by this author

First published: 30 March 2017

https://doi.org/10.1111/acer.13381

Citations: 75

Share a link

Email
Wechat
Bluesky

Abstract

Background

Stigma affects not only the person with a stigmatizing condition such as fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (FASD), but also their family members. This study examined whether there are stigmatizing attitudes about biological mothers of children with FASD in a crowdsourced sample.

Methods

Three hundred and eighty-nine participants were asked to rate levels of difference, disdain, and responsibility on 4 conditions: serious mental illness (MI), substance use disorder (SUD), jail experience, and FASD. A budget allocation task was administered as a proxy of discrimination. Prior experience with each of the 4 conditions was noted to assess familiarity.

Results

Research participants viewed mothers of children with FASD as more different, disdained, and responsible than women with serious MI, SUD, and jail experience. Budget allocation toward FASD service programs was significantly lower than that toward all other human service programs. Familiarity with the 3 comparison conditions moderated most of the stigma ratings, but this effect was not seen in the FASD condition.

Conclusions

Results supported the notion that mothers of children with FASD are highly stigmatized for their past behavior. The data also suggested that the public might discriminate against this population. Stigma reduction interventions should focus on contact-based strategies, rather than education-based strategies.

Graphical Abstract

We examined whether there are stigmatizing attitudes about biological mothers of children with FASD in a crowdsourced sample. Data showed that participants viewed mothers of children with FASD as more different, disdained, and responsible than women with SMI, SUD and jail experience. Results supported the notion that mothers of children with FASD are highly stigmatized for their past behavior. It also suggested that the public might discriminate against this population.

References

Amazon Web Services (2011) Discussion forums [amazon Website]. January. Available at: https://forums.aws.amazon.com/thread.jspa?threadID=58891. Accessed January 5, 2017.
Google Scholar
Angermeyer MC, Matschinger H, Corrigan PW (2004) Familiarity with mental illness and social distance from people with schizophrenia and major depression: testing a model using data from a representative population survey. Schizophr Res 69: 175–182.
10.1016/S0920-9964(03)00186-5
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Armstrong EM, Abel EL (2000) Fetal alcohol syndrome: the origins of a moral panic. Alcohol Alcohol 35: 276–282.
10.1093/alcalc/35.3.276
CAS PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Bell CC (2014) Fetal alcohol exposure among African Americans. Psychiatr Serv 65: 569.
10.1176/appi.ps.201300409
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Bell E, Andrew G, Di Pietro N, Chudley AE, Reynolds JN, Racine E (2015) It's a shame! Stigma against fetal alcohol spectrum disorder: examining the ethical implications for public health practices and policies. Public Health Ethics 9: 65–77.
10.1093/phe/phv012
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Berg BL (2004) Qualitative Research Methods for the Social Sciences. Vol. 5. Pearson, Boston, MA.
Google Scholar
Buhrmester M, Kwang T, Gosling SD (2011) Amazon's Mechanical Turk a new source of inexpensive, yet high-quality, data? Perspect Psychol Sci 6: 3–5.
10.1177/1745691610393980
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Cohen J (1988) Statistical Power Analysis for the Behavioral Sciences. 2nd ed. NY Routledge Academic, New York.
10.1046/j.1526-4610.2001.111006343.x
Google Scholar
Corrigan PW, Bink AB, Fokuo JK, Schmidt A (2015) The public stigma of mental illness means a difference between you and me. Psychiatry Res 226: 186–191.
10.1016/j.psychres.2014.12.047
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Corrigan PW, Morris SB, Michaels PJ, Rafacz JD, Rüsch N (2012) Challenging the public stigma of mental illness: a meta-analysis of outcome studies. Psychiatric Serv 63: 963–973.
10.1176/appi.ps.201100529
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Corrigan PW, River LP, Lundin RK, Wasowski KU, Campion J, Mathisen J, Goldstein H, Bergman M, Gagnon C, Kubiak MA (2000) Stigmatizing attributions about mental illness. J Community Psychol 28: 91–102.
10.1002/(SICI)1520-6629(200001)28:1<91::AID-JCOP9>3.0.CO;2-M
Web of Science® Google Scholar
Corrigan PW, Rowan D, Green A, Lundin R, River P, Uphoff-Wasowski K, White K, Kubiak MA (2002) Challenging two mental illness stigmas: personal responsibility and dangerousness. Schizophr Bull 28: 293–309.
10.1093/oxfordjournals.schbul.a006939
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Corrigan PW, Tsang HW, Shi K, Lam CS, Larson J (2010) Chinese and American employers' perspectives regarding hiring people with behaviorally driven health conditions: the role of stigma. Soc Sci Med 71: 2162–2169.
10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.08.025
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Corrigan PW, Watson AC, Warpinski AC, Gracia G (2004) Stigmatizing attitudes about mental illness and allocation of resources to mental health services. Community Ment Health J 40: 297–307.
10.1023/B:COMH.0000035226.19939.76
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Eguiagaray I, Scholz B, Giorgi C (2016) Sympathy, shame, and few solutions: news media portrayals of fetal alcohol spectrum disorders. Midwifery 40: 49–54.
10.1016/j.midw.2016.06.002
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Fleming A (2016) This mother drank while pregnant. Here's what her daughter's like at 43. Washington Post, January 18. Available at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/this-mother-drank-while-pregnant-heres-what-her-daughters-like-at-43/2016/01/15/32ff5238-9a08-11e5-b499-76cbec161973_story.html?utm_term=.81d5f55eaac3. Accessed April 12, 2017.
Google Scholar
Gergen M, Gergen M (2000) Qualitative inquiry: tensions and transformations, in Handbook of Qualitative Research, 2nd ed ( NM Denzin, YS Lincoln eds), pp 1025–1046. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
Google Scholar
Goffman E (1963) Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity. Prentice Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
10.1207/s15327019eb0904_5
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Huang JL, Liu M, Bowling NA (2015) Insufficient effort responding: examining an insidious confound in survey data. J Appl Psychol 100: 828–845.
10.1037/a0038510
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Jacobs L, Jacobs J (2014) Bad mothers have alcohol use disorder: moral panic or brief intervention. Gend Behav 12: 5971–5979.
Google Scholar
Jones KL, Smith DW (1973) Recognition of the fetal alcohol syndrome in early infancy. Lancet 302: 999–1001.
10.1016/S0140-6736(73)91092-1
CAS PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Kraiger K, Sanchez D, McGonagle A (2017) Replication of effects in organizational, student, MTurk, and Qualtrics samples. Paper accepted for presentation at the annual meeting of the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Orlando, FL.
Google Scholar
Link BG, Phelan JC (2001) Conceptualizing stigma. Ann Rev Sociol 27: 363–385.
10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.363
CAS PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Livingston JD, Boyd JE (2010) Correlates and consequences of internalized stigma for people living with mental illness: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Soc Sci Med 71: 2150–2161.
10.1016/j.socscimed.2010.09.030
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Lofland J, Lofland LH (1984) Analyzing Social Settings: A Guide to Qualitative Observation and Analysis. 2nd ed. Wadsworth Publishing Company, Belmont, CA.
Google Scholar
Miles MB, Huberman AM (1994) Qualitative Data Analysis: An Expanded Sourcebook. 2nd ed. Sage Publications, Thousand Oaks, CA.
CAS Web of Science® Google Scholar
Moses T (2014) Determinants of mental illness stigma for adolescents discharged from psychiatric hospitalization. Soc Sci Med 109: 26–34.
10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.12.032
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
MTurk Tracker (2015) Countries [MTurk website]. December. Available at: http://demographics.mturk-tracker.com/#/countries/all. Accessed January 5, 2017.
Google Scholar
National Academy of Sciences (2016) Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change. National Academies Press, Washington, DC.
Google Scholar
Paolacci G, Chandler J, Ipeirotis PG (2010) Running experiments on amazon mechanical turk. Judgm Decis Mak 5: 411–419.
Web of Science® Google Scholar
Riley EP, Infante AM, Warren KR (2011) Fetal alcohol spectrum disorders: an overview. Neuropsychol Rev 21: 73–80.
10.1007/s11065-011-9166-x
PubMed Web of Science® Google Scholar
Ross J, Irani L, Silberman M, Zaldivar A, Tomlinson B (2010) Who are the crowdworkers?: shifting demographics in Mechanical Turk. In CHI'10 Extended Abstracts on Human Factors in Computing Systems (pp 2863–2872). ACM, New York, NY.
10.1145/1753846.1753873
Google Scholar
Rouse SV (2015) A reliability analysis of Mechanical Turk data. Comput Hum Behav 43: 304–307.
10.1016/j.chb.2014.11.004
Web of Science® Google Scholar
Skitka LJ, Tetlock PE (1992) Allocating scarce resources: a contingency model of distributive justice. J Exp Soc Psychol 28: 491–522.
10.1016/0022-1031(92)90043-J
Web of Science® Google Scholar
Thornicroft G (2006) Tackling Discrimination Against People with Mental Illness. Mental Health Foundation, London.
Google Scholar

Citing Literature

Volume41, Issue6

June 2017

Pages 1166-1173