CPRC

Past Research: Professor Link's work in stigma, mental health, and social inequality is connected by an interest in the consequences of social inequalities for health outcomes. His career-long interest in stigmatization, both as expressed by the general public and as received by those exposed to stigmatizing attitudes and behaviors, has elucidated how the public uses labels and stereotypes to shape their responses to people with mental illnesses. Further, he developed and tested so called modified labeling theory, showing how stigma processes complicate the lives of the stigmatized and reduce their opportunities for employment, robust social networks, and self-esteem. His interests in stigma grew into a related body of work on connections between mental illness and violence, where he has explored the proposition that people with psychotic symptoms that involve either the belief that others will cause serious harm or commands from powerful others to hurt other people are more likely to cause violence than are those with other symptoms (e.g., thinking the TV is talking to you). In a third area of research, Link and colleagues found remarkably high reports of past homelessness—over 7%--in a probability sample of American citizens. Concerned that results could have reflected a misunderstanding of the brief questions, Link and colleagues re-contacted all survey subjects, collecting data which made it clear that the reports were indeed accurate and that an alarming number of people experience homelessness at some point in their lives. Finally, Link and Phelan put forward the idea that social conditions are fundamental causes of health disparities by SES and race. The idea emerged from observations concerning the persistence of the association between SES and health over time and its generality across very different places. This observation indicates that no fixed set of intervening risk and protective factors can account for the connection. Instead, fundamental-cause theory views SES-related resources of knowledge, money, power, prestige and beneficial social connections as flexible resources that allow people to avoid risks and adopt protective strategies no matter what the risk and protective factors are in a given place or time.

Present Research: Link continues his research in the area of stigma, with an R21 from the National Institute of Mental Health to develop qualitative and quantitative measures of the experience of stigma in persons who enter psychiatric hospitals for the first time. Link has continued to pursue his research on violence and mental illness by conducting a study funded by the NYS office of Mental Health concerning the consequences of “outpatient commitment” to mental health treatment. Finally, in the area of fundamental social causes, Link is seeking to further test the idea and its implications using data from national studies.

Future Research: Link plans to continue to develop the three programs of research that have animated his career so far. In particular, he plans to combine his interests in stigma and in violence through a large-scale longitudinal study of individuals with psychotic spectrum disorders, and study health disparities from the vantage point of fundamental cause theory, by adopting a life course perspective to follow up of a cohort of individuals who were born in the late 50s and early 60s. Link has been and continues to remain dedicated to training a new generation of scholars and will, as a result, maintain his involvement in the two postdoctoral programs he directs/co-directs.

Professor Link's Departmental Biography Page