Review The Experience of Stigma in People Affected by Fibromyalgia: A Metasynthesis, 2025, Colombo et al

The Experience of Stigma in People Affected by Fibromyalgia: A Metasynthesis

Benedetta Colombo, Eleonora Zanella, Alessandro Galazzi, Paola Arcadi

Aim
To review the qualitative literature regarding how people with fibromyalgia experience and are impacted by stigma.

Design
A systematic review and metasynthesis of qualitative studies was conducted following the Thomas and Harden method.

Methods
The electronic databases PubMed, CINAHL, PsycInfo, Embase and Scopus were queried (September 2023). No publication year limit was set. Twelve studies were included in the final analysis. The findings were reported according to the Enhancing Transparency in Reporting the Synthesis of Qualitative Research (ENTREQ) statement.

Findings
Three main themes with 11 sub‐themes were identified: manifestations and roots of stigma, avoidance and coping strategies, and consequences of stigma. Stigma arises from disbelief due to the invisibility of symptoms, protracted time to diagnosis and gender stereotyping, especially against women. Various strategies to avoid or cope with prejudice may involve social isolation, hiding the disease, controlling information, getting closer to or further away from other patients, acknowledging and understanding the disease. Stigmatisation can diminish a person's integrity and dignity, undermine trust in health care professionals and worsen suffering.

Conclusion
The metasynthesis findings align with previous research highlighting the pervasive stigma associated with chronic pain conditions. Greater awareness of the impact of disease‐related stigma on individuals with fibromyalgia is crucial, not only among health care professionals but also within broader societal and institutional contexts.

Implications for the Profession and/or Patient Care
Understanding the stigma experienced by individuals with fibromyalgia can guide health care professionals in adopting more empathtic approaches, potentially improving the diagnostic process and the overall management of the condition.

Impact
This study highlights the profound impact of stigma on individuals with fibromyalgia, emphasising the need for greater awareness and targeted interventions to address stigma in clinical practice and societal contexts.

Link | PDF (Journal of Advanced Nursing) [Open Access]

 

I guess physicians have no agency. These things are just happening without anyone being responsible, it's all automatic. Like bullets flying through windows and hitting someone. Sometimes they just do that. No one fires them, no gun is involved and a shooter is not needed, they just fly by and through people with seemingly no trigger or reason.

 

The system may be abstracted as an empathyless cold and metallic thing. But the system is the sum of the people inside it. So that just speaks to what happens when you indoctrinate a lot of people and discourage criticism… empathyless cold and metallic.

 

This rehash research paper feels like it was written in 2001.

The ups and downs of how much FM is considered real varies by the half-decade.

The empathy of docs is dependent on finding a bio-marker and/or the individual doc having a partner or close relative w/FM.

Not being "believed" and "understood" is a given. Nothing new in this.

PwFM navigate their alternative/alien world, grateful for any hints of being understood, believed.


Still, it is a nursing research paper aimed at changing nurses attitudes toward FM.

 

Being paid to operate stigmatising systems in service to me

I am not at all sure that rude professionals are more sympathetic if given a biomarker. They may have to acknowledge the core condition. But I heard so many stories of people with validated diseases (and other disabilities) being denied humane manners and treatment, too

Maybe these doctors, if lower-ranked, are like those agency carers, who start abusing their clients, while being themselves abused. And belittled even drubbed. Always rushed around and overloaded by management, drenching clients and staff alike, in contagious contempt

Whether serving or being served, it is so strange to get stuck in some dark corner, never knowing that, not so far off, there are decent goings on between people

Maybe its some economic framework made the crippling so much more scary than it need have been. One might think we were all lepers, once at all incapacitated

I was told that way way back, when the UK made workshops to employ the disabled, and the blind, there was a culture for staff to favor those who could easily be helped and were grateful, rewarding. But to frown on those who were more trouble-some to help

Maybe its not bio-markers these confounded doctors need. Maybe its a facilitating taxonomy and procedure (accurate, succinct, explicit and inclusive). Bbrrrrrr. These mass people-processing systems can work fine without a built-in bias

One does not have to be a determinate case, just to have an inviolate procedure. No-one had to explain my phone, to bill me for the airtime. Send me a detailed statement. And give me as long as it takes, on the phone to customer service, just to sort it all out

I know the grass looks greener on the other side, but I am so sure that, if I was paying the doctor, then they'd not be so indulged. Its the NHS pays them, so its not my custom they are keen to keep. They have a captive clientele in a subsidised mass market.

I wonder if its just the characteristic of a monopoly, to be so rude to a client. Or if not rude, then facetious with a snigger

I wonder if paying privately gets proper manners and attention, or just more window-dressing. Maybe its just a few bad apples, rotting down in a good keg of dedicated public service. Looking at me from the other shore across the wide gulf of their expertise