Caregiver Incarceration, Stigma, & Mental Health

Parental incarceration has adverse effects on children and young adults socially, physically, and mentally (Phillips et al., 2002). Caregivers with either past or present incarceration experiences increase adolescents’ tendency to correlate behaviors with exposures to traumatic events (Kautz, 2017). Our research question for this project is, “what is known about perceived stigma, mental health symptoms, and caregiver incarceration?” A systematic literature review has been conducted to determine various themes that arise in research examining stigma, mental health symptoms, and parental incarceration. The group has been conducting this research through twenty-eight separate databases in order to compare themes that have been discussed within the past five years. Of those twenty-eight, only half produced results. The databases with the most relevant information included Sage, JSTOR, the JAMA Network, and Psychology Database. We expect to find that young adults with a current, or formerly incarcerated parent have experienced stigma. We also expect to find that young adults with higher perceived stigma will have more negative mental health symptoms