Mental Health Stigmas

      Mental Health Stigma can be defined in 2 different ways: as the Social Stigma and the perceived stigma or self-stigma. The Social Stigma is an extreme disapproval or discontent with a person or a group of people on a social level and distinguish them from others in a society because of the “psychiatric label” that they have received. The Self Stigma is the way that the sufferers feel about themselves because of the mental label. This usually leads to a feeling of shame in the person.

                   Studies about Social Stigma have come up with surprising results (Wang & Lai 2008, Realey & Jorm 2011). Through means of a survey with over 1700 adults in the UK, the researchers found that most commonly, people believed that other people with mental health problems (Like schizophrenia, alcoholism and drug dependence) were dangerous and not to be trusted. The next most common belief was that mental health problems like eating disorders were harming themselves, and the third most common was that people with mental health disorders were hard to talk to. Despite the responder’s age, knowledge they had of mental health, and whether they knew someone with a mental health problem, they all can back with relatively negative beliefs.

Many people hold stigmatizing beliefs about mental health problems. Everyone from people who know someone with a mental health problem, have a family member or even have relatively good knowledge about them, have stigmatizing beliefs. This was found by Moses (2010) who discovered that adolescents with mental health problems were mostly stigmatized by peers, teachers, and even family members.

Through history the stigmatization of mental health problems have been prevalent. They are almost always treated differently, excluded and sometimes brutalized. There are many misguided views that people have shared about people with mental health problems contributing to these beliefs. Early people believed that mental health problems were caused by demonic and spiritual possessions. These believes automatically made people cautious discriminate and fearful of people with mental health problems. Even in medical models could be a cause of the discrimination. They put mental health problems on the same level as physical problems and therefore people see them as different. Also, because there is a diagnosis involved, they could be considered as having undesirable attributions.

Another factor in the discrimination of mental health problems is the media and popular press. Cinematic depictions of diseases like schizophrenia are often very stereotypical and include misinformation about the intensity of symptoms, causes and treatments. Owen (2012) discovered that most cinematic depictions of schizophrenics were violent, one-third were involved in homicidal behavior and one-quarter committed suicide. These are all very negative depictions of people with mental health problems, reinforcing these beliefs that people with mental health problems are always dangerous.

Stigma matters because of its judgmental and discriminating attitudes to people with mental health problems. They end up with negative social effects like exclusion, poor to no social support, worse quality of life, and a low self-esteem brought on by comments and general beliefs about them.