Background: The physically disabled is easy to develop a psychological problem due to long-term limitation of motion and inconvenience in social communication. There's still no consensus on whether stigma is related to the mental health of the physically disabled. However, resilience is closely related to mental health. To determine the influencing mechanism of stigma and resilience on mental health, the influences of stigma on anxiety and depression as well as the role of resilience in this process were explored in this study.
Subjects and methods: A total of 200 physically disabled people who had needs of rehabilitation were chosen from 5 communities surrounding Wuhan University of Technology from April 2020 to October 2021. Subjects' resilience, stigma, and mental health level were investigated by the Connor-Davidson resilience scale (CD-RISC), social impact scale (SIS), self-rating depression scale (PHQ-9), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD-7).
Results: Stigma of the physically disabled is positively related to anxiety and depression (r=0.618, 0.642, P<0.05), and it is negatively related to resilience (r=-0.561). Anxiety and depression are negatively related to resilience (r=-0.673, -0.665, P<0.05). Resilience can partially mediate the relationship between stigma and anxiety and depression. The mediating effect values are 0.10 and 0.18, respectively.
Conclusions: The stigma of the physically disabled is closely related to resilience, anxiety, and depression. It not only can influence mental health both directly and indirectly through the mediating effect of resilience.