How Does Poverty Stigma Affect Depression Symptoms for Women Living with HIV? Longitudinal Mediating and Moderating Mechanisms.

Purpose: In a sample of women living with HIV, we examined whether individual traits fear of negative evaluation and resilience moderate the internalization of poverty stigma that these women experience from others. We also examined the downstream effects of these processes on depression symptoms using moderated serial mediation analyses.

Methods: Data were collected annually for 4 years (2016-2020; T1, T2, T3, and T4) from 369 women living with HIV at 4 US cities using validated measures. Moderation effects were evaluated examining simple slopes at one standard deviation above and below the mean of the moderator. In all mediation analyses utilizing bootstrapping, we used the independent variable measured at T1, the mediators measured at subsequent visits (T2 and T3), and the outcome at the last visit (T4) to preserve the temporal sequence among the independent variable, mediators, and outcome variable. We also adjusted for T1 values of all mediators and outcome variables in analyses.

Results: Women with stronger fears of negative evaluation by others or lower dispositional resilience had stronger associations between experienced poverty stigma and internalized poverty stigma. Internalized poverty stigma (T2) mediated the association between experienced poverty stigma (T1) and depression symptoms (T4); this mediated association was moderated by fear of negative evaluation and resilience (T1). Finally, internalized poverty stigma (T2) and avoidance coping (T3) were serial mediators in the association between experienced poverty stigma (T1) and depression symptoms (T4), moderated by fear of negative evaluation and resilience.

Conclusions: Understanding factors that minimize internalization of stigma and buffer its negative effects on mental health can inform interventions to improve health outcomes of individuals with stigmatized conditions.