Mental Illness Stigma Essay

Twelve-year-old Rick has just been diagnosed with ADHD. He was prescribed pills and he had to go to the nurse office during recess. He felt ashamed of his illness and fear of anyone finding out. For while nobody knew until one. The rumor spread like a hurricane, he was ostracized by his classmates and received a negative comment such as “retarded” and got put into special education classes. His classmates did not understand why, all they knew is that “Rick needed to take a pill be normal”. Rick started to get into fights because his classmates teased him about the illness. He moved school to school hoping to blend with another student, but every someone finds out about his illness.
Mental illness is one of the most misunderstood illness.

According to Patrick Corrigan’s article “How stigma Interferes With Mental Health Care” Many people who would benefit from mental health care services do not seek it or fail to complete the treatment. One of the main reasons for avoiding help is a stigma; to prevent the label of mental illness that occurs when people are associated with mental health care. In the article “Wearing the Label of Mental Illness: Community-Based Participatory Action Research of Mental Illness Stigma”, by Jean Theuer,Nicole Jean-Paul, Kristi Cheyney, Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, and Bruce Stevens, the authors explains that once an individual is labeled as mental illness, he or she is viewed as a host that contain undesirable characteristics for human being.Including begin dangerous, undependable, weak and abnormal. For example, an individual who suffers from Schizopathic may be stereotyped as being “Crazy” and “Lunatic”. Wearing the social as well as the diagnostic lower’s an individual self-esteem and abilities. Not wanting to be ostracized by fellow peers and society, and an individual may avoid seeking health care and continue to ignore his or her symptoms. Many blame the individual for the illness they suffer and do not show empathy toward the individual. Even when an individual decides to seek help mental health care he or she may experience deep stigma from healthcare professionals. Mental illness stereotypic embeds

Mental illness misconceptions construct stigmatization within society. There are many source of mental illness stigma from inadequate information, media, religion, and ethnicity. In their article “Wearing the Label of Mental Illness: Community-Based Participatory Action Research of Mental Illness Stigma”, by Jean Theuer, Nicole Jean-Paul, Kristi Cheyney, Mirka Koro-Ljungberg, and Bruce Stevens illustrate that inadequate information and the media construct negative stereotypes while religion and ethnicity are conciliators of mental illness. The authors conduct a study which focuses on the community level and examines how community member experience stigma associated with mental illness. And what occurs when an individual is labeled with mental illness. The study identified four sources of mental illness stigma. One, inadequate information, leads to dependents on stereotypes. One interviewee explains that “there’s no good place to get information about it in daily life unless you seek it out. I mean no one ever sits down and talks to you about it in school”. Two, the media contributes to negative stereotypes about mental illness. Since Interviewees could not find adequate information about mental illness. They rely on the media as a source of information. Some interviewees did know that the media illustrate the stereotypic mental illness. Emphasizing the high frequency of characters with severe mental illnesses than compared