Still Stigmatized? People’s Beliefs and Attitudes about Mental Illness and Dange
Still Stigmatized? People’s Beliefs and Attitudes about Mental Illness and Dangerousness
Introduction
What do you think of when you visualize a person with a mental illness? Do you picture a person talking to himself and acting very bizarre and erratic? Do you imagine a woman with scabs on her face, missing teeth, and marks on her arms from shooting up? The reality is that most people with mental illnesses look and act pretty much like everyone else. There are subtle differences, but one will usually not really notice anything at first glance. There are also more extreme and relatively rare examples whereby people are clearly suffering from severe mental disturbances and are not in touch with reality. There is a wide spectrum when it comes to people’s experiences with mental disorders. People are not the same, their disorders are not the same, and their experiences and realities are not the same. With this said, it still appears as though many in the general public still have some pretty stereotypic and limited understandings of what the different mental illnesses are and how they really affect people’s lives, thinking, and behaviors. Having a mental illness can also have a significant impact on how others perceive and treat a person. This is a reality that hundreds of millions of people around the world have to deal with on a daily basis. According to the World Health Organization[1] , around 450 million people suffer from mental illnesses at any given point in time making this a leading cause of disability worldwide. Mental illness is a serious issue that demands much more attention and focused application.
What does seem to be fairly clear is that those with mental disorders are often treated quite differently from those that do not have a known mental health issue. Those that are dealing with any kind of severe mental health issue are often rejected and prevented from full social participation. This subsequent rejection and poor treatment can often exacerbate their health issues and send them down a darker and more troublesome path than they would have otherwise experienced. Prior studies have demonstrated how this social stigma can have real consequences on people’s overall functioning and health[2][3][4]. It is important to try and better understand why so many people think in these negative ways about those with mental illnesses and how this way of thinking subsequently influences how they ultimately treat those individuals.
One of the most clear-cut ways in which people are harmed by this negative thinking is in how they are socially isolated from others because they are so often looked at as if they are destined to act violently at some point. Even though most individuals with mental illnesses do not act violently toward others, they are very often seen this way and pushed aside.[5][6] It is very common for people in the general public to believe that those with mental health disturbances are in some way dangerous.[7][8] It is the aim of