Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Abortion Complication Syndemics: Structural Stigma, Pathologized Pregnancies, and Health Consequences of Constrained Care
Chapter 2: The Syndemic of Endometriosis, Stress and Stigma
Chapter 3: Pathologized Bodies, Embodied Stress, and Deleterious Birth Outcomes: Iatrogenic Effects of Teen Pregnancy Stigma
Chapter 4: The Multiple Stigmas of the PDI Syndemic: Poverty, “Racial"/Ethnic Discrimination, Incarceration, and Reproductive and Familial Risk
Chapter 5: Sickness in the Detention System: Syndemics of Mental Distress, Malnutrition, and Immigration Stigma in the United States
Chapter 6: Stigma Syndemic among People with Intellectual Disability who have been Incarcerated
Chapter 7: Stigma as a Driving Force in the Basic Causes of Malnutrition-Related Syndemics in Guatemala
Chapter 8: ‘Toothless Maw-maw can’t eat no more’: Stigma and synergies of dental disease, diabetes, and psychosocial stress among low-income rural Appalachians

About the Author

Bayla Ostrach is research scientist at the Mountain Area Health Education Center and appointed faculty in the Medical Anthropology and Cross-Cultural Practice program (MACCP) at Boston University School of Medicine.

Shir Lerman is post-doctoral fellow in Prevention and Control of Cancer Training in Implementation Science (PRACCTIS) at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

Merrill Singer is professor in the Departments of Anthropology and Community Medicine at the University of Connecticut and senior research scientist at the University of Connecticut's Institute for Collaboration on Health, Intervention, and Policy (InCHIP).

Reviews

This book unpacks how stigma—of abortion, menstruation, incarceration, immigration, and poverty—cannot be detached from structural vulnerabilities. Social-biological, social-psychological, and biological-psychological interactions exemplify how social experiences cannot be detached from syndemic theory. In these cases, it is the social experience of exclusion through stigmatization that systematically fuels isolation, ostracization, and subjugation from which poor health stems.
*Emily Mendenhall, Georgetown University*

Stigma Syndemics is a serious and long-overdue examination into one of the most pernicious drivers of widespread affliction. The contributors to this rare collection reveal how stigma in its many forms sits at the center of numerous seemingly intractable challenges. They also issue a clear mandate to overcome the pervasive threat of stigma in its widest sense.
*Bobby Milstein, ReThink Health and Massachusetts Institute of Technology*

This book reminds us of the power of stigma and its role as a cog in syndemic interactions. Stigma serves to create and reinforce ‘the other.’ The crucial role of othering in exposing people to risk, affecting their ability to disclose, limiting their access to care, changing the nature of their care, and creating life long suffering is well explored in this book through a series of case studies.  In this volume, authors demonstrate that conditions we might consider as normal, e.g. pregnancy, or minor, such as dental disease, are shown to be caught up in vicious cycles of disease, blame and suffering. This book is a salutary reminder to pay attention to trajectories of blame and that a focus on syndemics allows for tracing the precise pathways of stigma and its effects.
*Judith Littleton, University of Auckland*