Amandip Kalar

Supervisors: Dr Alan Pickering, Dr Herb Blumberg

Stigma, Ethnicity And Psychosis

My research programme consists of three studies, each of which investigates some aspect of psychotic illness in minority populations in the UK. My first study utilised an Internet Mediated Research (IMR) paradigm to investigate the existence of a ‘continuum of psychotic experience’ in a non-clinical sample of UK minority ethnic participants. Results showed an interesting association between internalised stigma and the prevalence of psychotic experiences, especially in the South Asian ethnic group. Investigating the nature of stigma and psychosis formed the basis of my fieldwork during Summer 2004 in the South Asian peninsula. This allowed me to assess qualitatively the nature of stigmatising attitudes towards psychosis in this ethnic group. My current project is an exact replication of the fieldwork study but using a UK-based South Asian sample. By comparing themes around mental illness in the UK resident South Asians and those in their home country, one can determine which themes ‘survive’ migration.