Researching Stigma

2/8/2021

This past week I began my research on the stigma against headache disorder and migraines and I focused on specifically on the types of stigma that these patient might face and how they cultivate to create a worse environment for the patient as well as the advance of headache medicine to better treat these patients. The article I looked at talked about three major types of stigma: internalized, endorsed, and enacted. Internalized stigma of patients is often cultivated by the outside perceived stigma felt by the patient from either their personal or work life. Another idea I found was that patients who felt as if they may have felt less stigma against the condition were often more likely to listen to their healthcare professionals, from taking their prescribed medications to even the effectiveness of said medication. Similar to this, internalized stigma does affect physician-patient relationships as patients may feel as if their physician does not truly understand the pain they are going through. Endorsed Stigma is the agreement of prior stereotypes, and enacted is behavior that discriminates against the person who suffers from migraines, this is usually common in the workplace and I believe in order to boost worker productivity we must find ways to help alleviate these patient's stressors at work. The final type of stigma that I looked at was enacted stigma. This is behavior that directly discriminates against those who suffer from migraines, and although this is not as common I be of the opinion that it is important to recognize how these behaviors and how they may be detrimental to not just the patient's health, but to the entire field of headache medicine.