Stigma In Mental Health

The term stigma, from a historical perspective, referred to a mark made on an individual to brand them as having an undesirable moral character (Darity, 2008). Goffman, (1963) introduced the term stigma into psychological literature. He did so to reflect an attribute of character to indicate that an individual was tainted or devalued by society(Byrne,2000). Stigma associated with mental illness, remains a powerful negative attribute in all social relations. Public stigma is defined as the degree to which the general public holds negative views and discriminates against a specific group (Pedersen & Paves, 2014). Stigma is a form of discrimination that has been characteristically associated with mental illness. The psychological
Social workers should be cognizant of the issue of how mental illness is associated with stigma in order to effectively serve the population, and select appropriate interventions. Stigmatization from the perceiver’s perspective falls into two broad approaches: motivational and cognitive. In 2008, Darity stated that the cognitive approach conceptualizes stigmatization as a by-product of human information-processing biases. People tend to use schemas, or mental categories, to reduce the potentially limitless number of stimuli in the world into more manageable groupings. Cognitive processes bring about stigma primarily because they bring about stigma and provide the perceiver with the benefit disassociating from the concept. The motivational approach simply highlights how individuals stigmatize others to subliminally bolster their own self-esteem (Darity,
People with mental illness are also disadvantaged through systemic discrimination, such as a lesser investment of health-care resources allocated to the care of people with mental disorders than to those with physical illnesses. Furthermore, people with mental illness tend to experience disparities in access to treatment for physical health conditions, which could contribute to an increase in morbidity and premature mortality; all of which are the by-products of the stigma associated with mental illness (Thornicroft et al.,