Taken together, these results demonstrate that attention to unique stigma-related processes (e.g., concealability) may be important in explaining adverse mental health outcomes among stigmatized groups, although it appears to depend on the psychological mediator that is being evaluated (e.g., social support vs. rumination). Thus, the psychological mediation framework suggests that a fuller conceptual understanding of the experience of stigma requires an appreciation of the factors that distinguish different stigmas and the basic psychological processes that operate in common across stigmatized groups. To date, few studies have examined different characteristics of stigma in relation to the general psychological processes reviewed in this paper. Nevertheless, it appears that further consideration of these potentially synergistic relationships as depicted in the psychological mediation framework can help to advance theoretical research on stigma and the stress process in substantive ways.
