Does welfare stigma influence mental health, risk of experiencing interpersonal violence and perceived employability? And, what can be done to stop it?

People who receive government welfare benefits are frequently described as “lazy and dependent” and perceived as less competent and less warm than others. These negative stereotypes underlie welfare stigma. Being a member of a stigmatized group frequently takes a toll on mental health, and consistent with this, welfare stigma is argued to lead to the poorer mental health of those who receive welfare benefits. In this presentation I will report on analyses from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey and original experiments. The analyses of HILDA will consider the prevalence of proximal experiences that may contribute to poor mental health among welfare recipients, namely, hiring discrimination and experiences of interpersonal violence. The discussion of the experiments will focus on how volunteering may offset these stereotypes that lead to stigma and discrimination.

Tim Schofield is a post-doctoral research fellow who joined the Centre for Mental Health at the end of 2016. He completed his PhD in social psychology at the University of New South Wales and has published research investigating attitudes, stereotypes, prejudice, anger, and violence. His current research is focused on welfare stigma and makes use of a combination of experimental methods and secondary data.

The event flyer is available for download.