Stigmas on Mental Health

In this assessment, I wanted to look more into the stigmas and discrimination, and mental illness. After going through and reading precisely what stigmas is to start. The article goes into detail about who "three out of four people with a mental illness report that they have experienced stigma" (World Health page 1). It then went on to give a little visual example: "Stigma=stereotyping-->prejudice-->discrimination" (World Health page 1). This made me connect the dots to understanding what stigma is. As I kept reading, it started talking about how stigmas make a person feel and just the overall experience of how it feels to go through a stigma. Some examples of how it makes a person feels were on page 1: "shame, blame, hopelessness, distress, secret, loneliness, isolation, and social exclusion, stereotyping and derogatory labels, misrepresentation in the media, being treated Bauer 2 differently than the rest of society, discrimination in housing, employment or services" (World Health page 1). When breaking those all up, it seems like many signs of depression, which made me think somehow they might be connected or share many of the same details. Page two of the article, it then went to state some research about stigmas such as "[in]...2006 Australian study found nearly one-quarter of people surveyed felt depression was a sign of personal weakness and would not employ a person with depression, around a third would not vote for a politician with depression and 42% thought people with depression unpredictable. One in five surveyed reported that if they had depression, they would not tell anyone. The stigmatizing attitudes were much higher towards people with schizophrenia. Nearly two-thirds of people surveyed thought people with schizophrenia unpredictable, and one quarter felt that they were dangerous" (World Health page 1). This, to me, was a fascinating study, and would not mind even looking more in-depth into that research. From that, I started to wonder can a person even challenge a stigma, which is luckily in the article on page one. It goes on about even more exciting research stating that they "suggest that stigma may be reduced by protest, education, and contact. Through protest, stigma is presented as morally unjust, and people are encouraged not to act in inappropriate ways. Education challenges inaccurate stereotypes about mental illness and replaces these with factual information. Contact, that is, face-to-face interactions between a person with a mental illness and the general public brings the greatest improvements in public attitudes" (World Health page 1). Page two shows some myths and facts that were fascinating to learn about, but overall, this article helped me understand how much mental illness people have to go through, which only adds to whatever they are battling, beginning with. Therefore, putting an end to stigma would benefit not just mental health people but also make everything and everyone feel better. We need to put a stop to harmful mental health stigmas! For the generations to come and come because if we start with our youth, hopefully, it will carry on over to the next and keep getting better because what we are doing right now isn't enough we must want to do more to stop it, and once we realize it someone that cares a whole lot will be our only chance at putting an end to it all!