Stigmatization Towards Children and Adolescents with Mental Disorders or Their Family Members

In this Research Topic, we invite researchers to send manuscripts related to the stigmatization towards children, adolescents with mental disorders or their family members. As we know, stigma and discrimination are a strong barrier to initiate and maintain the treatment of mental disorders not only for adults but also for children and adolescents. Children and adolescents with mental disorders could experience stigmatization and discrimination in social and school environments by peers, teachers, neighbors, family members, and even by themselves. They might experience different kind of stigmatization as public, internalized and courtesy stigma that the public also stigmatizes the parents of these adolescents. Parents sometimes are accused of poor parenting and experience unpleasant emotions such as anger, guilt, and shame. Parents might feel guilty and embarrassed because their child’s illnesses are inherited from them or because they believe that they cannot be good parents or protect them. It might affect the parent and child interactions that the child and adolescents could internalize the stigmatization. Therefore, the children and adolescents with mental disorders and their family members are vulnerable to experiencing public, courtesy stigma and internalized stigmatization.



Since the mental disorders during child and adolescents increase every day and most of mental disorders may start in early adolescents and young adulthood, the exploring the predictors and level of all stigma types and combating stigma towards mental disorders in this period is curial. This causes children and adolescents who are in the period of mental development to feel more alone and excluded. In the following processes, it may cause additional psychopathologies on the basis of low self-perception. For these reasons, the stigma is important. As far as we know, there are limited studies related to stigmatization towards child and adolescents with mental disorders or their family members. Therefore, this research topic aimed to investigate stigmatization during child and adolescent period or their families with all dimensions and all field such as child development, child and adolescent psychiatry, nursing, psychology, social work and education.



As the goal of this Research Topic to highlight knowledge on stigma towards/among/in children and adolescents with mental disorders or their family members, we welcome all manuscript types reporting;

• Level of public, courtesy or internalized stigmatization towards children and adolescents with mental disorders or their family members

• Focus on the development or validity and reliability of any measurements of all stigmatization dimension among children and adolescents with mental disorders and family members.

• Stigma experiences of children and adolescents with mental disorders or family members.

• Evidence-based interventions to combat with stigmatization towards children and adolescents or their family members by professionals.