Giving Compass' Take:

• Roop Sen and Uma Chatterjee discuss the debilitating impact of stigma on victims and identify five ways to mitigate stigma.

• How can donors engage in their communities to combat stigma? What are other issues that suffer from stigma?

• Learn about a social marketing campaign reducing mental illness stigma.

Research on stigma shows that its impact is psychologically and socially debilitating for victims. One research study on the role of stigma and stigmatization among female survivors of child sexual abuse, sexual assault, and intimate partner violence found that stigma and related symptoms (such as post-traumatic stress), indicated which youth with abuse histories experienced more sexual difficulties and dating aggression. It also observed that stigma and stigmatization play an important role in shaping survivors’ thoughts, feelings, and behaviors as they recover.

Through our work and research with survivors of trafficking, we have developed a five point approach to mitigate stigma.

1. Healing workshops
A structured and organized set of trainings and experiential workshops with survivors of sexual exploitation is required to address their internalized stigma. Unless some of the moral judgements that survivors internalize are questioned, they could continue to introject the social hate towards sex work, suffer from mental health problems, and be vulnerable to self-harm.

2. Education on stigma and its impact on people
Stigmatizers need to understand how their prejudices can have debilitating impacts on a person psychologically, physically, and emotionally, can seriously damage a person’s resilience and self-esteem, and may push them into self-harm.

3. Increasing stakeholder contact
It is important to create interfaces and engagement between stakeholders, such as the government or civil society, and survivors. Engagement should also happen through meetings where survivors participate fully.

4. Protests and campaigns by survivors
Collective protests against discrimination and stigma towards survivors help turn shame, fear, and alienation into confidence, while reducing stigma.

5. Rewards for speaking out
This is a strategy used by nonprofits as well as survivors where they affirm and reward a stakeholder for a positive role they played in supporting survivors against stigma, alienation, and violence.

Read the full article about 5 approaches to fight stigma against survivors of trafficking by Roop Sen and Uma Chatterrjee at India Development Review.