Iranian Journal of Sociology

Abstract To understand the stigma process in the context of Iranian society, the present study has systematically reviewed the literature in this field. Therefore, after going through the three-step process of systematic review, 66 articles were identified for study. According to the results, stigma includes three stages: label, response, and consequence, which appear in interactions in the social context, in the form of labels and sarcastic statements such as insults and humiliation, inappropriate behaviors such as verbal violence, and gestures. Then the person adopts interactive or non-interactive strategies to handle his/her identity. The last stage is the wide range of negative personal consequences such as the emergence of negative and social feelings such as rejection and discrimination, which, having the capacity to create challenges in social identity, excludes people from the natural flow of life and deprives them of human rights and citizenship.

Abstract Regarding the importance of maintaining and enhancing family members relationships during the period of imprisonment, the present paper uses a survey method to examine the relationships between stigma (independent variable), the quality of family members relationships (mediating variable), and lack of mental health of family members (outcome variable). The variables became operational as follow: The stigma in two dimensions of interaction and gender; the quality of family members' relationships in three dimensions of wife-husband relationships, mother-child relationships, and father-child relationships; and mental health in three dimensions of depression, anxiety of female head of household, and children conduct disorder. The systematic sampling was used and included 222 women head of households supported by the Center for the Protection of Prisoners in Tehran. Based on findings in the range of 1 to 6, the average quality of family members' relationships was 3.6 and it was moderate. The increase in the stigma was accompanied by a reduction in the quality of family members' relationships. Also, the increase in the stigma led to an increase in the level of lack of mental health in the families. Decreasing the quality of family members' relationships was also associated with an increase in lack of mental health status. According to the results of multivariate analysis, 15% of changes in the variance of women's depression were explained with the entry of the quality of wife-husband relationships, and the quality of mother-child relationships, 14% of variations in women's anxiety variable were explained with the entry of quality of mother- child relationships, and the number of people who are supported by the mother, and 23.4% of the variance of children's conduct disorder was explained with entering the quality variables of the father-child relationship, the quality of mother-child relationship and household income per capita.