Society Affix Stigma with Mental Illness
Contributed by Ragini Sinha
Mental disease and its stigma is observed in most of the
culture. People of different age, gender or socio-economic
status may suffer from mental illness. At least twenty percent
of people pass through mental disorders in some way or the other
during their lifetime. Stigma towards mentally ill people is
very risky. This affects on their ability to perform duties,
their revival, treatment procedure and support they receive, and
their recognition in the group of people. Stigma is considered
as a sign of shame, dishonor or disapproval, of being rejected
by others. Stigma is painful and humiliating. In our social
structure stigma surrounds with mentally ill persons which is
worsening patient's life. It is a need of hour to attribute to
the root causes of this unnecessary dilemma from sociological
perspective, which creates hindrance in treatment and cure.
Since Civilization, persons suffering from mental barrier of
their disability accompanied social stigma and negative social
mind-sets. A determined negative outlook and social rejection of
people with disabilities is evident all through history and
across the culture. Society viewed mentally ill people as either
morally wrong or they were being punished by God, or as being
possessed by demonic spirits requiring some religious
interventions. Persons with mental illness were taken as an
entity of social hilarity and they were teased. It has been well
recognized that social member always maintain distance with
mentally sick people. Research indicates that the extent of
social rejection and social stigma differs with precise
disabilities, creating a well-defined hierarchical order. People
harbor negative social reactions to persons with mental illness
across generations regardless of enhanced care, legislative
support, and a more advanced medical understanding of the causes
and origins of these disabilities.
Researchers are continuously trying to find out the major
grounds of mental illnesses being stigmatized in changing world.
It has been observed that stigma emerges when people feel uneasy
or awkward to talk about behavior they make out as different.
The stigma surrounding mental illness is so concentrated that it
lays a wall of silence around this issue. Stigma occurs due to
many factors. Major constituents are labeling, stereotyping,
separation, status loss, and discrimination, further indicates
that for stigmatization to occur, power must be exercised.
Stigma can be visualizing in many circumstances because
stigmatizing progression can interrupt on various fields of
people's lives. Stigmatization possibly has a remarkable
comportment on the distribution of life chances in mental
illness. In our conventional society, people have been misled to
accept as fact that an individual with a mental health problem
has a weak character or is potentially dangerous. It may be due
to imprecision and falsehoods. However, mental health issues
only become visible when someone is in a crisis. The majority of
the public is unaware of how many people with mental health
issues they know and come across every day.
Labeling someone with a condition and stereotyping people with that condition, creating a division - a superior group and a devalued group, resulting in loss of status in the community, discriminating against someone on the basis of their label. Some illnesses remain on the social fringe ignored, mocked, disrespected and discredited. People diagnosed with a mental illness are typically categorized as an object of contempt. Though the expression 'mental illness' itself entails a difference from 'physical' illness, but these two are closely intertwined. It is a truth that physical changes in the brain coupled with mental disorders, signifies a biological origin. Some mental health advocates propose switching to less stigmatized terms, such as behavioral health or brain disorders or brain illnesses. For some people, mental illness is not due to legitimate medical reason but it is an outcome of mentally ill person's wrong actions, decisions and preferences. They are blamed and fed in mind that their illness is all in their head. They may think that mental illness is a sign of weakness or laziness.
People usually apprehend that mental illness is hazardous and
erratic. This notion is often ignited by media accounts of
crime, although statistics don't bear out a connection between
mental illness and violence. Generally people have feeling that
person gripped under mental illness is less capable,
inefficient, should be institutionalized or will never get
improved. As an effect of such stigma, mental illnesses remain
the butt of jokes in popular culture. General public develop
fear and mistrust and have distorted perceptions through
negative depiction by incompetent person against mental
illnesses. This is misguiding and leads to stigma. People are
more stigmatized to some kind of mental illnesses than others.
It depends on seriousness of illness. Schizophrenia, for case in
point, is viewed as more dangerous and highly stigmatized than
depression. It is usually mocked and misrepresented and is less
likely to generate concern. Depression, on the other hand, is
less often scorned because antidepressant medications are
continuously advertised and assured to public for better result,
thus it is more acceptable.
Deinstitutionalization and better treatment and rehabilitation
services make comfortable to individuals with mental illness.
They receive services at community, agencies. Unfortunately,
still the stigma of mental illness remains a significant problem
encountered by psychiatric consumers, especially those pursuing
education or employment. The influence of stigma encompasses
stereotype, prejudice, discrimination, separation, and status
loss , which make individuals with MI more vulnerable to social
rejection, income loss, limited opportunities for employment or
education, relapse, and experiencing another psychiatric
disorder. The literature on stigma has been mainly sociological,
positing that expected stigma is cognitive beliefs in
devaluation-discrimination concerning individuals with MI
negatively affects self-esteem.
Stigma is attached to people with mental illness because sometimes a fear is generated that persons with mental illness are seen as violent, brain injured, rationally disabled, trifling, unreliable or inconsequential. When these myths and stereotypes have been nourished for long enough, people can internalize them and start to believe it. This internalized stigma, combined with the external discrimination that may be experienced, make mentally ill feel rejected, lonely, depressed, dismissed and less than human. Whether the people have or have had a mental illness or not, stigma can definitely affect them. The stigma surrounding mental illness has not occurred overnight. Stereotypes, myths and misconceptions can take years to develop into what we mistakenly believe is reality. It will take time to deconstruct much of the stigma in our society, especially because we don't identify it as anything other than reality. There is much we can do to actively challenge stigma, and everyone can play a role.
In our society, many examples can be found which elaborates
strong causes of stigma attached to mentally ill people. Mental
health advocates severely criticized electronic media as
contributing to the stigma of mental illness. Seeing as two
decades, television was implicated in perpetuating the stigma
attached with mental illness. Since that time, mental health
advocates have asserted that the electronic media portray mental
illness in an unfavorable and inaccurate manner. Societal
members accrue a misconception that mentally ill persons are
threat to healthy community through getting inputs from media.
Information and broadcasting media like TV, movies, and
newspapers do feign people with mental disorders because they do
not have appropriate knowledge. They just want to generate the
subject more appealing narrative. Sometimes they do not take
opinion of medical experts and create fictitious story, which
negatively affect on viewer's sensitive mind and people judge
mentally ill patient as a great peril to their civilized
society. For example, people with mental illnesses are often
represented as dangerous or out of control. They are shown to
public with ugly get up. But research shows this is hardly ever
the case. In our culture there are certain verbal communications
which are frequently used against persons with mental problems
also generating a negative effect. In other words, stigma can be
highlighted by commenting typical disgusting words like "loony,"
"psycho," or "crazy," though they may seem harmless but can be
spiteful. Most of our views and interpretations of stigma
attached to mental health issues have been imprecise. We are
bordered by stereotype: popular movies about killers with mental
health issues; news coverage of tragedies and violence caused by
people with mental health issues; jokes about people with mental
health issues; the insanity defense and news coverage of
homelessness which is typically attributed to mental health
issues. These representations distort the public's view and
reinforce inaccuracies about mental health issues.
Business sector is also under grip of stigma with mental
illness. Mental illness is widespread in organizations. Though
public are more aware of mental disorders over the past few
decades, managers' understanding and acceptance of the
pervasiveness, treatment, and impact on organizational life has
lagged behind. Mental illness still carries a stigma in these
areas. It may be due to modern psychiatry and clinical
psychology is relatively new fields of practice. Due to fear of
spoiling image on people, we hardly ever make known our
miserable moods, our feelings of stress and anxiety, or other
mental symptoms to our work colleagues. Yet in organizational
set up discussions take place about allergies, broken bones,
influenza, and even cancer- "legitimate" subjects because they
are "medical". The reason is same, our organizational staff may
misjudge and stigmatize. It will affect greatly on professional
and personal domain. Within the field of mental or emotional
illness, there should be inequality in the threat value of
conditions, relating to differences in behavioral manifestations
and possible reversibility. Thus neurotic anxiety sufferers, who
are often outwardly nervous and impulsive, should be more
threatening to other people than are depressives, whose behavior
may be passive and nondestructive. Such variations as have just
been mentioned in the threat potential of stigmas should create
differential levels of fear and hostility on the part of the
non-stigmatized.
This is ever-worst condition of being stigmatize with mental
illness than any other health hazards. Many researchers state
that people are blamed for their worse condition of mental
illness. This is not the case of those with cancer or heart
disease. People who abuse substances have been perceived as more
blameworthy than those with mental illness. Attitudinal and
emotional responses toward persons with mental illness,
including beliefs about responsibility and awfulness, are likely
to be prejudiced by acquaintance with serious mental illness.
Previous research has found familiarity to be inversely
associated with prejudicial attitudes about mental illness.
Careless uses of diagnostic labels are most obvious sources of
stigmatization with mental illness. In medication of mental
illness, diagnoses are functional tools because they sum up the
case history of a patient's illness and smooth the progress of
communication among medical staff involved in treating the
patient. When non-professionals handle these tools that are not
familiar with the original definition of the term, these become
less helpful in communication and misguide other people to label
patient with negative phrases. It can also be injurious when
used by even doctors if diagnosis and instructions are not
communicated in a careful and restrained manner. It may flash
incorrect information among general public and people may harbor
negative attitude. The public and health professionals may have
positive outlook and response to persons with mental illness,
once they are told that a person has an illness about which they
have prejudices. Innocent public take inputs from eminent
person's attitude and attach stigma no matter it really the case
is or not. The health systems that require medical decisions
should be based on diagnoses and without having resources that
would ensure appropriate protection of diagnostic information
about the patient are also to be blamed. Being conscious of the
power of diagnosis and of the labeling process might contribute
to a sensible use of diagnoses, but removing the diagnosis by
itself would not eliminate stigma. Psychiatrists and other
mental health staff also stigmatize patients in some or other
ways. I recent past, psychiatrists in some European countries
and elsewhere were requesting longer holidays and a higher
salary than other doctors because they had to work with mentally
ill patients who are hazardous, while arguing, at the same time,
that mental illness is no different from other illnesses.
Psychiatrists are among those who recommend separate legislation
for persons with mental illness to protect some people who are
mentally ill, often unaware of the effect that such legislation
might have on all other patients. They should certainly continue
to do whatever is necessary to protect their patients; but it
would help if they also advocated the notion that the rights and
duties of people with respect to mental illness should be
decided by their behavior and capacities in the same manner as
for normal person rather than by the diagnostic label alone.
Directors of institutions and hospitals in which people with
mental illness are treated or find shelter rarely insist that
their clients should be given an opportunity to participate in
elections or other voting like other citizen. Mentally ill
people are socially isolated. No one has seen that the
installation of ballot boxes in mental hospitals where there is
much awareness of the need to protect human rights and social
rights of those with mental illness.
The harmful and ongoing stigma leveled at those who suffer with
mental illness is so common that it can be easily identified if
people have superficial look around. For many, of course, this
identification does not require even a glance, as they are
actively confronted with the innumerable effects of embedded,
systemic stigmatization on a daily basis, ranging from slight
deviations from common courtesy when encountering a person with
mental illness to the reified division between mind and body
evidenced by the ongoing lack of mental health parity in many
health insurance plans. Such stigma is slowly deteriorating our
social structure and inviting other dangerous problems. It is
responsibility of intellectuals, medical professionals and
government administration to look at the issue seriously and
educate people to give fair treatment to such patients. One
important point is that if public deal such mentally ill people
with affection and realizing them that they are part of society,
significant change will be observe. Mental patients need
attention, affection and support from common people. Good
response from people will definitely improve their mental
status. We all have to erase stigma from our mental dictionary
and must make positive efforts to enhance the level of mental
patient in third millennium as a healthy society.
Email :
kalpstava@yahoo.com