The purpose of this study was to examine the influence of stigma and social support, which were social
interaction factors, on the dimensions of community integration, through the mediating effect of ego-identity.
The ego-identity of people with mental disabilities was selected in this study as one of their major
constituents, and community integration is one of the performance indicators for the recovery of people
with mental disabilities. Literature analysis and a research study were implemented to serve the purpose
of the study. The subjects in this study were 415 people with mental disabilities who were users of social
rehabilitation facilities and/or mental health centers in Seoul, Incheon, Gyeonggi Province and Chungcheong
Province. As for data analysis, structural equation modeling was utilized. As a result of analyzing the
collected data, the ego-identity of the people with mental disabilities became weaken when they experienced
negative social interaction in their local communities, and the level of their community integration became
lower as well. The respondents who experienced positive social interaction came to have a higher
ego-identity, and the level of their community integration became higher as well. Specifically, ego-identity
produced a perfect mediating effect when stigma, which was a negative interaction, affected each subfactor
of community integration. And that produced a partial mediating effect when social support that was a
positive interaction affected each subfactor of community integration.