Stigmatization: Myths and Minds
It has only been within the past decade or two that we have begun to better understand the biochemical causes of mental illness. Although there is still much to be discovered, it is now known that mental illnesses are similar to physical illnesses, since they often have biochemical causes and medical treatments.Most cultures view or have viewed severely mentally ill persons as crazy, lacking will-power, possessed, frightening or violent. One universal element of this stigmatization and discrimination against the mentally ill is the traditional belief that severe mental illness is caused by something supernatural or paranormal, such as possession by spirits, curses or sorcery attacks, influence by the moon ("lunacy"), divine punishment, karma, or is the result of a moral transgression.
Mental Health Spending – A Low Priority for Government
The power of stigmatization of the mentally ill is so strong that it keeps mental health low on the list of public priorities for spending. One of the barriers to treatment for the mentally ill is the inability to pay for it, and another is how to access it. Policy-making and funding decisions for mental health by federal, state and local legislators result in inadequate government-funded mental health care facilities, insurance reimbursement, community programs and treatment specialists available.
Resistance to Seeking Treatment for Mental Illness – How Others Can Help
There is a time when a mentally ill person may realize that they need help. Symptoms worry them or others enough that they consider getting treatment. But the White House Conference on Mental Health identified stigma as the most important barrier to treatment for the mentally ill. (1) More than any other reason, stigma, or fear of the consequences of being labeled "mentally ill", prevents a person--who realizes he or she may need help--from reaching out for that help. Powerful and pervasive, the stigma of mental illness makes it hard enough for a person to personally admit that he or she has a mental illness, much less talk about it to others.
Impaired Awareness of Mental Illness
There are about six million severely mentally ill people in the United States. About half of these severely mentally ill do not know they are ill. (1) (Severe mental illness includes schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and a few other diagnoses). There is a medical term for this condition: anosognosia, an impaired awareness of one's own disturbed mental condition, despite evidence to the contrary. An ill person may claim that everything is fine, when it is not. This impaired awareness of mental illness is caused by damage to specific parts of the brain. Neurocognitive deficits, or symptoms of a brain dysfunction, are part of the mental illness. People with anosognosia do not recognize that hallucinations, mania, delusions, paranoia or other symptoms of mental illness are, in fact, mental illness.
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