Mental illness stigmatization

One comment captured best the interviewees shared sentiments T am not responsible for being depressed. I can t help it. But I am responsible for what I choose to do with it. Of course, these thoughts cannot erase the opinions of the uninformed who stigmatize the mentally ill. But recognizing both that illness is only one part of who you are and that you did not cause it can help diminish the self-blame that only deepens the pain of depression. 

What this means is that the threshold to external stimuli is raised and lowered at will within waking (in hypnosis) and involuntarily within sleep (in dreaming). Whether the threshold adjustment is voluntary or involuntary, there tends to be a reciprocal enhancement of internal sensory stimuli that reaches hallucinatory strength easily (in dreaming) and with more difficulty (in trance). This particular feature of hypnosis strengthens the claim that hallucination, the most severe and stigmatic symptom of mental illness, can be triggered in two entirely natural states. Hallucination... 

Pescosolido, B., Perry, B., Martin, J., McLeod, J., 6c Jensen, P. (2007). Stigmatizing attitudes and beliefs about treatment and psychiatric medications for children with mental illness. Psychiatric Services, 58, 613-618. 

The psychiatric disorders represent a duality of suffering for the patients, as they not only have to combat the disease but also have to endure the stigmatization of being mentally ill. Thus, not only is there a need for effective pharmacotherapy and research into the pathogenesis, there is also a need for changing the public view on these disorders. 

I told Jennifer that from her descriptions, both of her parents probably were depressed, even though neither had ever been formally diagnosed. Genetics probably accounts for 40 to 50 percent of mood disorders, including depression but because mental illness has been stigmatized for so long, many people who today would be considered depressed have never been diagnosed. 

Here Cide unmasks homosexuality as a socially stigmatized role, like witch or Jew, which, under the pressure of public opinion, its bearer is likely to disavow and repudiate. The homosexual is a scapegoat who evokes no sympathy. Hence, he can be only a victim, never a martyr. This is as true today in the United States as it was in France a half century ago. The same applies, moreover, to the mentally ill he, too, can only be a victim, never a martyr. 

To illustrate in depth the ways in which Institutional Psychiatry serves the function of stigmatizing individuals as mentally ill, thus producing psychiatric scapegoats, 1 shall review some representative medical, journalistic, legal, and psychiatric writings on the nature of mental illness, psychiatric care, and mental health services. I shall begin with the views of an important authority in public health, a discipline often taken as the model of modern socially oriented psychiatry, and work my way toward specifically psychiatric contributions. 

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