Self-stigma of incarceration and its impact on health and community integration.

Our findings add to work on self-stigmatisation in the field of mental health by showing that the concept appears relevant and appears in similar staging among formerly incarcerated individuals and that self-stigmatisation is likely to be important for their community reintegration. Our sample was not typical of the wider prison population for race and gender distribution, in particular having fewer than expected those minority groups likely to be especially vulnerable to stigmatisation by others. Our findings nevertheless suggest that further, preferably, longitudinal research on self-stigma to enable better understanding of pathways could substantially help treatment and rehabilitation of individuals after release from a correctional facility.