Monday, February 26, 2007

In the Dark: The Stigma Surrounding Mental Illness


Despite the large growth in the psychological community and the world’s interest in mental illness, it seems that psychology still lies in the unknown for many. The data is limited due to the lack of funding and support needed to perform clinical research, provide information to the public, create programs to allow personal accounts to be heard, and ultimately end the stigma surrounding these disorders. This week I have found two blogs that discuss this ongoing problem and voice very similar concerns to those I have briefly stated above. Below are my additional views of their accounts of stigma the mentally ill face today beginning with Brain Blogger and then followed by an excerpt found in Medical Mondays.

The constant cycle that continues to keep mental illness in the shadows seems to be hopelessly true. Many years ago people were thought of as a disgrace to their family and community and were often sent away to insane asylums where they were mistreated, drugged, and dehumanized. Even today things have not changed much. The mentally ill are often abandoned, victimized, jailed, and/or left homeless. This is due to the lack of understanding of their situation and how to best accommodate those with mental illnesses as well as an inability to put ourselves out there as selfless beings in order to improve ourselves as a whole. As this blog states, the predominance of these disorders is evident in the statistics shown, and those alone should be enough to at least get people thinking and talking about our situation with mental illness.

I was so pleasantly surprised to come across this post when searching for the latest talk on mental illness. I find it especially noteworthy because not only does it suggest the intriguing work of Stephen Hinshaw’s book, The Mark of Shame: Stigma of Mental Illness and an Agenda for Change, but it also brings this extremely important issue of stigma into a very public arena. Although society’s view of mental illness has changed greatly over the past few decades, we are nowhere near where we need to be in the progression of addressing and treating those afflicted with these diseases. As a community we should have the knowledge and will to support our peers in this difficult way of living, but the stigma we place on psychological disorders only disables our efforts. By being straight forward with ourselves and saying we are pre-judging and negatively addressing the mentally ill, we can hopefully make the choice to change our way of thinking and create a movement that will lead to more accessible, more productive, and less invasive treatment and support.

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