Being made to feel different, lesser, or unwanted can be a common experience for many minority groups. When people are excluded or denied full social acceptance because they are perceived as having a “lesser” status or value, they can often internalise these beliefs, or stigma.

Researchers at Xi'an Jiaotong-Liverpool University (XJTLU) investigated this internalisation, known as self-stigma, among university students. They found that, over time, students with higher levels of mindfulness had lower self-stigma and fewer depressive symptoms.

Minority group and self-stigma

The study involved 194 university students from the Chinese mainland who resided in Hong Kong. In the 2023/24 academic year, such students exceeded 17,900, making up more than 17% of the total student population. “These students, whose minority status is not immediately noticeable to others at first glance, may experience invisible stigma,” says Dr Rebecca Cheung, the corresponding author from XJTLU’s Academy of Future Education.

Cultural and physical proximity to the host population does not shield minority students from forms of stigma such as persistent stereotyping. Internalised stigma or self-stigma is characterised by deeply held negative self-perceptions, including beliefs of personal inadequacy and social failure, which consistently link to deteriorating mental health over time.

Over nine to 10 months, the researchers invited students to complete a pen-and-paper survey three times with a four-month lag between each round. “A lot of existing studies are cross-sectional, meaning they only collect data at one time point,” Dr Cheung says. “We collected the data over time to establish the directionality of effects and to understand whether stigma or mindfulness is longitudinally related to mental health outcomes.”

Mindfulness as a solution

In the study, mindfulness is proposed as having a possible link to lower self-stigma. It is defined in the literature as an awareness that arises from intentionally paying attention to the present moment without judgment. The study found that students who were more mindful tended to report lower levels of self-stigma months later.

"When someone is able to be present and non-judgemental, we found them to have a lower level of self-stigma," Dr Cheung says. "This lowered self-stigma is then associated with better well-being.”

Notably, mindfulness was also associated with a decrease in depressive symptoms.
Students who scored higher on mindfulness at the beginning of the study reported significantly fewer depressive symptoms several months later, a pattern researchers link to mindfulness's well-established role in interrupting the ruminative thought cycles that characterise depression.

A surprising disconnect: self-stigma and depression

The study also shows an unexpected result. Contrary to previous research, self-stigma did not forecast depressive symptoms among the students over time. Students who reported a higher level of self-stigma in the beginning were no more likely to report more depressive symptoms than those who had a lower level of self-stigma.

“The null finding was a little surprising, because a lot of existing studies show that stigma is linked to anxiety or depression. In this study, we did not find that,” Dr Cheung says.

The researchers point to several possible explanations, such as the relatively short interval between measurement points and the possibility that participants in this sample had low baseline depression levels.

Opening up options

Although the research did not indicate an exact causal relationship between mindfulness and lower self-stigma, it is not ruling it out either. One plausible explanation is that when someone is more mindful, distancing themselves from the situation and pausing before reacting, they create options to respond differently to public or self-stigma.

“When we have a wider range of responses available to us, we are free to choose whatever seems the most skilful or helpful, and that can change our mental health,” Dr Cheung says.

These findings may be applied to improve the mental health of minority groups. In addition to combating the stigma held by the majority, applied researchers and practitioners may consider addressing the internalisation of stigma by incorporating mindfulness into their interventions, teaching techniques such as mindfulness meditation. These interventions may help reduce self-stigma and increase mental well-being.