Trending
Public stigma toward mental health issues is not as pronounced in 2023 as it was in the distant past, but the unfortunate reality is that such stigma still exists today.
Education and public awareness are tools that can be used to combat stigma, as are the courageous personal disclosures by several high-profile public figures about their own struggles with mental illness.
The late, esteemed television journalist Mike Wallace was very forthright in discussing his battles with clinical depression.
Five-time National Basketball Association All-Star Kevin Love has divulged his struggles with major depression and panic attacks, while comedian Howie Mandel (obsessive-compulsive disorder), former National Football League standout Brandon Marshall (borderline personality disorder) and actress Catherine Zeta Jones (bipolar disorder) have all beaten the odds to attain great professional success while living with severe mental illness.
The late Nobel Prize winning mathematician John Nash Jr., whose enormous contribution to society while waging a heroic battle with schizophrenia was the basis for the Academy Award-winning movie "A Beautiful Mind," was also a trailblazer in bringing mental illness out of the shadows and into the public mainstream.
Such celebrities are doing their part to enlighten the public about mental health and mental illness, and therefore, to reduce stigma.
Patrick Corrigan, PsyD, editor of the American Psychological Association's journal "Stigma and Health," successfully lives with mental illness himself. Corrigan praises the bravery of individuals who have publicly disclosed their mental health problems.
"The more that people with mental illness come out, the more that it will suppress bigotry and it will promote what we call affirming attitudes,'' Corrigan said in an interview on the American Psychological Association's website. "And there are two affirming attitudes. One is the reality that people do recover, and the second is that, therefore, they should have hopes and aspirations like everybody else does."
The National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI) is an organization which has an affiliate in every state and nearly every county in this country, and which serves to provide educational programs, resources, advocacy and hope for individuals and their families who are affected by mental illness.
The office number for the NAMI Blair County affiliate is 814-327-7083 and the member helpline number is 1-888-999-6264.
"I think it's better today," Denis Navarro, retired UPMC Altoona Behavioral Health Services Department outpatient services supervisor and clinical specialist, said about the problem of public stigma toward mental health and substance abuse disorders. "The education is better with groups like NAMI and the (increased) acceptance of these disorders by families, physicians and schools.
"The medical professions and all the other professions that are dealing with health hopefully have a better understanding of these conditions now than they used to," Navarro added.
It's also commonplace today to encounter television and radio advertisements about various topics surrounding mental health, including medications that have been effective in treating the disorders.
"You never used to see a television advertisement or commercial about mental health or about medications for a mental health condition, but now these advertisements are broadcast frequently," Navarro said.
Such increased publicity can be a double-edged sword, however, as some people may decide, without consulting a professional, that certain medications will automatically provide cure-alls for them.
On balance, however, the advertisements are beneficial because they do bring the subject of mental health and the medical treatment of mental disorders into the public eye.
"The ads do direct people to contact their physicians," Navarro pointed out. "And the ads do bring into the mainstream the fact that these diagnoses and conditions exist, and that they are treatable."
Parity laws concerning insurance generally now provide much more equitable coverage for the treatment of mental health and substance abuse disorders than that which existed in the distant past, and that has been another positive development in the fight against discrimination.
Pejorative, negative terminology used in some public realms to refer to mental illness must also be confronted and eliminated.
Terms like "psycho," "basket case," "head case," "crazy," "insane," "nuts," "unstable" and "loony" are just a few examples of the negative damaging jargon which has been used by the uneducated to describe people living with mental illness.
"A lot of it is education," Navarro said when discussing the key to fighting public stigma toward mental health issues. "I would say (discrimination, bias and stigma) is most prevalent among the uneducated.
"There's the lack of understanding among many families that these problems are very treatable and not something to be ashamed of, and that families need to pull together and help the person in the family who is affected."