Racial & Ethnic Inequity in Pain Care
Racialized and ethnic minorities often receive poorer pain care. Our research aims to unpack these inequities by exploring underlying observer mechanisms and intervention targets necessary for promoting equitable pain care. Specifically, we aim to elucidate the role of perspective-taking, empathy, emotion, non-verbal behaviors, attentional biases, and expectancies/attitudes in shaping pain care experiences for both children and adults. By conducting our research internationally, with collaborations spanning the Netherlands, USA, and Belgium, we seek to capture the nuances of racialized and ethnic inequities in pain care within different cultural and healthcare contexts. This global perspective allows us to uncover common patterns as well as unique challenges faced by racialized and ethnic minority populations in accessing and receiving equitable pain care.
Perceived Injustice & Pain
Among many impactful appraisal processes, perceptions of injustice play a key role in individuals' experience of pain and suffering. Such perceptions may arise through different experiences including stigma and discrimination. Our research addresses the phenomenology and impact of injustice appraisals, and contextualizes these processes in the broader psychosocial and societal context of (chronic) pain (treatment). Our recent work has further explored the relationship between perceptions of racial discrimination, injustice and pain outcomes. This line of research reflects a longstanding and strong international collaboration between research groups across the UK, the US, Canada, and Belgium. As such, the produced results are embedded in a cross-cultural perspective on pain (care), with a profound sensitivity to the complex interplay between contextual factors and its impact on pain and suffering.
Remembering Pain & Suffering
Memory for pain and suffering can be more damaging than its initial experience. Our research examines how individuals' pain-related attention and significant others' language and narrative style shapes how we remember pain and suffering, and how - through intervention development and implementation- negative memories can be reframed. Our recent memory work extends to the context of child birth and aims at examining the role of language that women and significant others use to describe their childbirth in shaping and reframing labor memories. Women from racial & ethnic minority groups receive particular attention here as they have shown to be especially vulnerable for enhanced negative child birth memories.
Stigma in Mental Health care & Other Contexts
Individuals with mental health problems often bear a double burden by not only having to manage their condition but also to contend with mental health stigma. Individuals with minoritized identities (e.g., racial and ethnic, gender or sexual minority groups) may be disproportionately impacted by mental health stigma due to their stigmatized social identities. Our research examines the phenomenology of mental health stigma, its antecedents and buffering factors and its perceived impact on mental health care services that individuals seek or receive. Our work also examines stigma & discrimination among individuals with minoritized identities within other contexts including academia.