The Stigmatization: ‘Mark of Slaves’ and Mental Health: Evidence from Visually Impaired Students in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Everyone living in society has to face challenges in the ever-changing world. People tend to do different things to adapt to them. People are indispensable resources for society. Therefore, their physical and mental fitness is expected to be properly applied to anything. The most important of these is the mental fitness of man. A person's mental integrity enables him to perform tasks accurately and effectively. But even if they have the ability, another person works to trap them in a certain frame of society due to certain shortcomings of the people. But it is believed that doing so will greatly affect their ability and mental health. The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of stigmatization on mental health of visually impaired students in the Southern Province in Sri Lanka and to explore their views on how and what to deal with stigma in the future. The methodology is done with quantitative research approach and 80 students were selected based on simple random sampling technique as the sample out of 100 populations. Data collected through questionnaires, all constructs were valid, reliable and fit the research model. Visually impaired students believed that stigmatization had a significant negative impact on the mental health of them. The model has four hypotheses, two are accepted and two are rejected. Further, the greater the discrimination of them, the lower the mental health of students. As well as there was no significant impact of negative stereotypes and devaluation on the mental health.