Stigma is dead.
Stigma was eradicated years and years ago in many people who suffer from no-fault biological diseases. For example, stigma used to exist in men with prostate cancer and women with breast cancer. It also existed in people with no illness at all: gays, lesbians, the left-handed and other historically marginalized populations.
But over time all these groups found a cure: they simply decided that there was no stigma to having cancer or being gay, lesbian or lefty. It was not, as some claimed, a "mark of shame" or "token of disgrace." Period.
They killed stigma and recognized that what they were really suffering was prejudice and discrimination.
While eliminating "stigma" was relatively easy, requiring only a change in their own thinking, the battle to eliminate prejudice and discrimination was much harder and is still ongoing, because it requires changing others. But importantly, eliminating prejudice and discrimination couldn't be done without first recognizing that the alleged "stigma" that was preventing everyone from speaking out didn't even exist. Stigma was killed, and everyone moved on to focus on the real enemy: prejudice and discrimination.
Mental illness advocates should do the same. Declare stigma dead and move on to focus on what really exists: prejudice and discrimination against the mentally ill.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month. This year, it should be celebrated as "Stigma Is Dead Month." Next year it should be converted to "End Discrimination Against The Mentally Ill Month."
Activities should not focus on "expanding awareness of mental illness." As I wrote in one of the articles I am most proud of, current mental illness awareness activities are not only ineffective, but they are harmful. Almost all of them are designed to work by hiding the most seriously ill and parading around the highest functioning and least-symptomatic in an effort to convince the public that this somehow reflects the reality of untreated schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. It has the exact opposite of increasing awareness of the horrors of the illness. It's like trying to raise funds for hunger by only showing the well-fed.
Instead of focusing on nonexistent stigma, we should focus on eliminating the public policies that discriminate against the mentally ill and are causing so many to become homeless, incarcerated or the victims of suicide.
There are a host of those: a two-tiered health system that shunts people with mental illness to substandard medical care; laws that require people with mental illness (unlike those with Alzheimer's) to become dangerous before they can be treated; Medicaid policies that refuse to reimburse the mentally ill in hospitals; and policies that send the most seriously mentally ill to the end of the line for mental health services rather than the front.
Stigma is dead. Discrimination and prejudice really exist.
http://mentalillnesspolicy.org
Follow DJ Jaffe on Twitter: www.twitter.com/MentalIllPolicy
Tom Wootton: Eye Exams and Bipolar Disorder
Tom Wootton: Understanding Bipolar: You Don't Know the Half of It
So,we must not hide the reality that violence that can occur when these citizens do not receive timely and appropriate treatment. We know the agony that flows from a lack of treatment for those who suffer from schizophrenia, manic depression and other psychoses. To tip-toe around the hard realities of these diseases does not help anyone. Especially since people are well aware of these frightening incidences of violence in society, anyway.
If only citizens truely understood the realities of SMI they would demand that governments give these suffering souls the essential treatment and care. To ignore them abandons them to suffer for decades, alone,untreated--literal orphans of our health care system.
We know that scientific research brings cures to illnesses. Let's bring our search for answers to legitimate scientists.
But we are not there yet. We are still subject to ghettoized justice. We still don't get trials before we are locked away. Forced treatment -- being strapped down and shot up with brain burning chemicals because you pissed off the doctor -- still exists. Forced electroshock is still out there and often publically funded. In NYS, about 80% of us lose our kids in family court because the law defines "mental illness" as a reason to remove children.
I know that my experiences in the mental health system have scarred me. I mourn the ones who didn't get away; I carry survivor guilt.
We have been kept by legal traditions from being part of the general society who have some basic rights including due process, free speech and freedom from job discrimination. We have been spoken for throughout the centuries by well meaning professionals, family and friends.
We don't need your descriptions of us. We speak for ourselves. Thank you
The Committees behind the Medicaid policies and medical care laws clearly have a false and misinterpreted view on the mentally ill, and as long as this view remains stigma is and will be very much alive. We must continue to fight to break the stigma attached to mental illness in order to have a fighting chance against the public policies.
I'm proud and glad to admit or confess that I am active in the Consumer movement, here, in Kans as. Three years ago, I participated in a program that trains mental health consumers to become Certified Peer Support Specialists, I currently serve on a Consumer Advisory Council whose purpose is to educate, advocate and collaborate to help improve the state mental health system, and to do all we can to improve the lives of all mental health consumers in Kansas.
Recovery can and does happen....I'm not where I'd like to be, but, I've come along way from where I was three years ago prior to services. The best things the general public can keep in mind is that people with mental illness are just as human as you are...the only difference is we have additonal struggles and challenges that are barriers to our reintegration into our communities. Secondly, people with mental illness can be productive members of society...we have strengths, talents and gifts to offer to help others...Recovery is about people!
I have suffered from severe and debilitating depression and anxiety since childhood. There are days I look at where I am in life and I'm amazed I'm still here, but the fact that I was able to work myself through college, work, and continue to do things that most people take for granted is sometimes amazing to me, and at times just downright exhausting.
But it's been drilled into my head since I was a kid that mental illness of any kind is a weakness, and you can't show weakness, ever. My parents could not have an imperfect child, so I had to hide a lot of what I was going through on top of dealing with my issues. So I was very ashamed of what was going on, and there are times I still am. Sometimes I'm still ashamed that I have to take medication in order to keep from completely melting down, and I'm ashamed that I can't just 'snap out of it'. When you are taught from childhood that there is something inherently wrong with you, it's hard to wake up one morning and just say 'I'm fine'.
I don't expect anyone to wake up and say 'they are fine'. I do hope they can wake up and say, "hey, before I had mental illness, I didn't know what it was either. And maybe these people who call people with mental illness mean names, are just not educated about the reality."
There are a few facts that are almost never discussed about fear based disorders, to begin with there is the original onset of the disorders that can begin with the overused words of out-of-the-blue panic attack, or the slow almost insidious onset of deep trepidation and apprehension of anxiety! Neither one is given an explanation as to why they occurThere would be no further appearance of either form of anxiety if we were not to dwell on the frightening aspect of a return appearance of either one. It is unfortunate that this fact is never mentioned to those suffering these experiences, they long term of either or both of these frightening dilemmas is simply a joke on us by the way we keep on obsessing over the fearful symptoms created by both. Not a mysterious or strange disorder but simply a bad habit turned compulsive by our innocent minds!
ReleaseFromFear "The Jokes On Us/The Innocent mind" George Christophe
Why am I and so many of my brothers and sisters with mental health issues not afforded the success of the general population? Why are so many of us incarcerated or homeless? The public knows about these issues, we need to get there attention.
http://psychservices.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/61/8/741
http://www.reinventingtheeventhorizon.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/leaving-the-seclusion-room-some-not-so-crazy-notes-on-recovering-from-mental-illness/
Kathryn McCullough
I think some responsiblity might be borne by those who have these conditions, though - the high functioning people, at least. I *resisted* a diagnosis of bipolar (and the proper help) for the longest time because my brother has it and used a whine of "but I'm bipolar!" to excuse for being a jerk. I've since learned that this condition doesn't make jerks - jerks make jerks. It took some... extremity... in my life to accept what I was.
I never sought help on my own because of fear. All I knew of mental illness was that people who had it were somehow "less than". They weren't normal. They were to be pitied and feared. I now know better. We are not "less than" anyone or anything. We do not want nor need pity, And we are not to be feared. As far as not being normal... What is normal, anyway??? A pigeonhole ideal that no one can really live up to if you think about it.
We fear what we do not know about and that fear leads to prejudice and discrimination.
I can say there are no stigmas and mean it, but I dream of the day I can say there is no ignorance and mean that, too!
I agree that action needs to be taken to end the public policy-driven discrimination against those with mental illness. But, we also need to create a shift in thinking on an individual level in order to foster an environment where healing can happen. That begins by eliminating some very real stigmas. @NoStigmas
Stigma or a “mark of shame” related to mental illness is perpetuated by the myth that mental illnesses are some sort of character flaw that the person with the illness is to blame for. This stigma is still strong enough that many people are afraid of losing their jobs or friends by disclosing that they have a mental illness. The stigma is also strong enough to convince policy makers that to some extent mental illness is not a legitimate illness deserving of the policies other major illnesses get.
Inequity in policy does not automatically translate into discrimination. One has to look at the thought processes of the policy makers. The stigma and myth that mental illness is a character flaw is a large part of the reason why there is no strong voice for mental illness at the policy table- people were embarrassed to speak out about their illness. Additionally, the policy makers themselves think of mental illness as less “real” then other illnesses.
Blaming individuals with mental illness for “believing” that there is a stigma, is unfair and uncalled for, especially from a mental illness advocate. The stigma remains very real, and has a strong hold on both policy and daily social and work situations for people with mental illnesses.