Does stigmatization wear down resilience? A longitudinal study among children affected by parental HIV

Social stigma has deleterious effects on psychological well-being. Emerging empirical evidences suggest that resilience is an adaptive mindset that generally enables people to survive and thrive in adversity. The current study used a three-wave longitudinal data to examine the potential bidirectional association between perceived stigmatization and resilience. Children of parents living with HIV (n = 195) were assessed at the baseline and followed up for 12 months with 6-month intervals. Cross-lagged panel analyses were performed in the study. The findings showed that the autoregressive effects were stable for perceived stigmatization and resilience, suggesting stable individual differences over time. The cross-lagged effects indicated that perceived stigmatization negatively predicted the level of resilience. However, resilience did not predict perceived stigmatization during the study time. The study suggests a robust longitudinal effect of perceived stigmatization on resilience. The potential bidirectional association between perceived stigmatization and resilience should be examined in the future studies. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.