Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

At a time when alarming numbers of people with HIV/AIDS seek help under cover of darkness, deeply ashamed of their plight, it is crucial to find ways to better comprehend and address the specific nature of stigma around HIV/AIDS in southern Africa.

The publication provides a literature review of HIV/AIDS, Stima and Children.

HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth: Prevention Issues and Approaches provides suggestions for support of vulnerable youth who must face chronic disease or death, poverty, drug abuse, and racism, as well as the tribulations that accompany adolescence. Social workers, case managers, psychologists, and nurses who work with HIV-affected and vulnerable youth and their families will find unique recommendations on how to assist these individuals in resisting risky behaviors. This unique collection of research studies expands on the current knowledge while informing us of how much more there is to be learned. This informative book will enlighten you about the children and mothers who are most likely to be affected by the HIV disease, the poor people of color living in substandard housing who are subjected to discrimination and social isolation. The multiple losses experienced by these women and children because of infection, crime, and substance abuse are included in this valuable book but most importantly you will discover how you can alleviate some of the stresses caused by these losses. Through HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth, you will discover multiple ways to successfully help the adolescents in your practice deal with the challenges inherent to HIV, economic hardships, and substance abuse.Comprehensive and intelligent, this important book will help you address the needs of HIV-affected children or families with humanity, sensitivity, and ethnically sensitive interventions. With HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth, you will find unique interventions to help the youth and family in your community by: discovering how facing the mortality of an HIV-infected family member has profound psychological effects on a child or adolescent and how you can help ease this crisis for your clients understanding why many youth who must cope with the eminent death of a family member deal with this crisis by engaging in risky behaviors which may result in HIV infection for themselves realizing that the lack of education about HIV, how it is transmitted, and how to prevent transmission may be part of the problem for high-risk youth learning how some HIV-positive children exhibit stable functioning and resilience in coping with their health, but have difficulties exhibiting the same stability in other aspects of their lives realizing that the social stigma surrounding HIV has not lost its intensity and that this stigma is a part of the everyday reality for HIV-affected children and their families HIV Affected and Vulnerable Youth: Prevention Issues and Approaches brings to light the daily heartache and struggles of HIV-affected children and their families. The day-to-day challenges of families and youths due to HIV-infection, crime, substance abuse, and sometimes where and how they live pose problems to the well-being of these individuals and are significant obstacles to mental-health therapy and health care services. This helpful book offers you several intervention techniques in order to improve the lives of HIV-affected individuals and families in your community.

This report forms part of a project funded by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation to implement a strategy for the care of orphans and vulnerable children in Botswana, South Africa, and Zimbabwe with a review of the available scientific information on interventions aimed at children, families, households, and communities.

HIV-related stigma and discrimination and human rights violations constitute great barriers to preventing HIV infection; providing care, support and treatment; and alleviating the impacts of the epidemic. This publication documents case studies of successful action in different countries addressing HIV-related human rights violations, stigma and discrimination.