Stigma Attached to Mental Illness
Causes of Social Stigma
- Superstition resulting from fear of the unknown
- Lack of exposure to modern scientific thinking
- Equating a lack of social interaction skills with being socially dysfunctional
- Seeing the affliction to be a reflection of inferior mental abilities
- Not seeing aspects like lack of motivation, or introspection, as symptoms, but as traits to be shunned, or to be dealt with by disciplining
- Observing the motor skills of people under treatment to be ‘peculiar’, instead of seeing it as a ‘phase’ in recovery
- Feel that the relatively low proportion of individuals who get back to the social mainstream is evidence of ‘incurability’ and the need for isolation.
- Lack of literature that bridges the psychosocial, psychological, and physiological aspects of the condition
- Viewing the inability of science to provide a single medication, or dosage,for everyone as evidence that its roots are mystical and not scientific
Repercussions of Social Stigma
- Having an unfounded need to be secretive about getting professional help
- Feeling inferior or inadequate simply because the afflicted are told they are ‘different’
- Isolating even the people who have overcome much of the challenge, due to a fear that they will ‘act’ in an unsocial manner
- Not coming out in the open despite having remission of symptoms and living successfully with the condition
- Concluding that the genetic basis of schizophrenia is not as readily accepted as it is for other conditions like diabetes, hypertension, etc.
- Sensationalizing, and damaging misrepresentation of the condition by the media, for popular and mass appeal
- Not being covered or subsidized by most underwriters or tax laws
- Fear and distrust of many caregivers due to the eclectic nature of the condition
- The mushrooming number of spurious cures, both in conventional therapy and in alternative therapy
What may help overcome Stigma as a Society
- Stigma from near and dear
- Promote new social research
- Include ‘unorthodox’ practices based on their efficacy
- Launch new Stigma groups to overcome negative symptoms of mental illness
- Promulgate new legislation for insurance and taxes to cover the condition
- Have patience