Karlijn Roex, a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, will present her paper “Stigma against people who are presumed to be mentally ill: causes and potential action.” at a free event organized by The New York Branch of ISPS-US

Saturday December 17th
NYU Silver Center, 31 Washington Place, Room 408,
4-6pm 

Reservations are not required and there is no fee. Contact Brian Koehler if you need more information at [email protected] or 212.533.5687. Please bring photo ID if possible for NYU Security.
Read more about the talk Karlijn:
Stigma against people who are presumed to be mentally ill: causes and potential action
Abstract It is well-known that people who are presumed to be mentally ill are highly stigmatized. They are considered to be more prone to violence, unpredictable and less capable. This stigma has been shown to be present worldwide. Moreover, being stigmatized has severe consequences for one’s well-being, subsequent mental health and can even have fatal consequences as we see in fatal police encounters. In the current presentation, Karlijn Roex explores the roots of this stigma from a sociological perspective, using Goffman’s symbolic interactionism. If behavior does not meet our common expectations, it is unpredictable and therefore stigmatized as potentially dangerous. Unpredictability, however, can be dealt with in other ways than merely stigma. This is shown by insights from assimilation theory. Conflict theory, as deployed by Bruce Link on stigma, shows how the current stigmatizing response to people presumed mentally ill is a choice of societies that emphasize and exploit inequalities. This elaboration on the roots of stigma will be followed by an interactive discussion of what social actions we can take to combat stigma. Because stigma is a social fact that exists independently from the individual, it can only be addressed on a social level.

Karlijn Roex is a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies (Germany), currently visiting at Columbia University, and a human rights activist. Before, she has studied at the University of Oxford. Since April 2016, she is a member of MindFreedom International, advocating for the rights of people with extreme mental states/ distress. Besides her dissertation on the social causes of suicide, she currently works on a project studying the precarious freedoms of people with extreme mental states/ distress.