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People occupying stigmatized social positions often withdraw from sources of social support, becoming stressed, depressed, and isolated. Homelessness is globally prevalent and stigmatized. Despite the overwhelming evidence that homelessness is associated with experiences of isolation and poor mental health, there is a sparse understanding of how stigma and social relationships interact with mental health in this context. This mixed‐method study presents evidence that relationship breakdown is a common precedent to experiences of homelessness. It further shows that people withdraw from potential sources of support due to the stigma associated with homelessness. The findings demonstrate that universal forms of social contact and perceived social support do not consistently associate with mental health. Rather, distinct types of support, from different support sources, are associated with higher levels of mental health. Policy implications considering the relationship of stigma and social relationships within the context of homelessness are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The association between stigma and adverse interpersonal outcomes is well established. However, the mechanisms underlying this association have yet to be comprehensively conceptualized and tested, in part because research has neglected to evaluate stigma across multiple levels. To address this gap, we examined whether stigma—measured at individual, interpersonal, and structural levels—prospectively affects loneliness and social support by thwarting fundamental belonging needs, using a longitudinal sample of 315 gay men. Results indicated that thwarted belonging needs prospectively mediated the association between interpersonal discrimination, internalized homonegativity, and concealment motivation and changes in loneliness and lack of social support. When indirect pathways were tested simultaneously, discrimination was uniquely associated with reductions in social support via thwarted belonging needs. In addition, the prospective association between objectively‐measured structural stigma (at the state and county levels) and loneliness and lack of social support was serially mediated by perceptions of structural stigma and thwarted belonging needs. To guide future work, we propose a model outlining pathways by which stigma, across multiple levels, may lead to adverse interpersonal outcomes by increasing relationally‐oriented biological, motivational, cognitive, affective, and behavioral mechanisms that affect belonging needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students from lower socioeconomic status (SES) backgrounds can experience stigma in undergraduate educational settings but little research on this topic has been conducted at the PhD level. Lower‐SES PhD students may feel lower levels of social integration as they experience incidents of interpersonal disconnection from others inside and outside of academia. Interpersonal disconnection may be a mechanism by which lower‐SES leads to a lower sense of social integration. In this prospective study of first‐year PhD students at three North American universities (N = 608), we assessed students' perceived social integration and their interpersonal perceptions inside and outside of academia 2–8 times throughout their first year of graduate school. Relative to higher‐SES students, lower‐SES students perceived lower levels of social integration. They had difficulty making academic friends, felt dissimilar to their academic peers, and perceived a lack of understanding about their work in graduate school from non‐academic families and friends. They also lost non‐academic social ties. These interpersonal disconnections prospectively mediated the association between lower SES and lower levels of perceived social integration. Lower‐SES PhD students are at risk of impaired interpersonal relationships. Institutional policies to promote social connections among PhD students may help lower‐SES students integrate into academia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]