BRUCE LINK, Ph.D.

Bruce Link, Ph.D. is a sociologist and a psychiatric/social epidemiologist. His training includes sociology (Ph.D. 1980), psychiatric epidemiology (National Institute of Mental Health Training Program 1975-1979) and biostatistics (M.S. 1982) all at Columbia University. He is currently a Professor of Public Health at Columbia University and a Research Scientist at New York State Psychiatric Institute. Dr. Link’s interests have focused on socioeconomic status and health, the health consequences of stigmatization and marginalization, the stress process, the prevalence of homelessness, and the connection between mental illnesses and violent behaviors.

Dr. Link’s interests in stigma began in the late 1970s and early 1980s when the dominant view assigned little importance to the stigma of mental illness. Stigma was seen as “transitory” and “not a severe problem.” Any rejection experienced by people with mental illnesses was chalked up to their “aberrant” behavior and not to “stigma”. In response to this background Dr. Link undertook a number of studies of both the general public and people in treatment for mental illnesses. These studies provided both an explanation for how stigma might be important in people’s lives and evidence to support that explanation. Dr. Link’s interests in stigma expanded out from his interest in the stigma of mental illness to include stigma associated with psoriasis and unexplained pain. His most recent work on stigma has focused broadly on the stigma concept and on the future of stigma in the age of new genetic information about disease risk.