When your wellness is afflicted with any condition, stigma and discrimination can take its toll. However, these issues can really affect the wellbeing of those with mental health problems, greatly exacerbating the difficulties they face. Stigma is a toxic combination of ignorance, fear, prejudice and power play and, unfortunately, it doesn’t look like it’s going away any time soon.
Last month, the anti-stigma campaign Time to Change published a series of articles in the British Journal of Psychiatry, evaluating the first phase of the programme. led by the mental health charities, Time to Change’s first phase ran between 2007 and 2011, aimed at both the general population and at specific target groups, such as employers and medical students, as well as people with mental health problems. Making use of social marketing, advertising campaigns and one-day events, Time to Change wanted to increase social contact between people with experience of mental health problems and various target groups.
Such contact did indeed have a positive impact, especially when it came to personal relationships. The reports noted that discrimination from friends reduced by 14%, family by 9% and social life by 11%, albeit this was based on a very low survey response rate of 6-11%. The survey also found that if you know someone who is open about having a mental health problem, this has a clear and positive impact on your behaviour. In the current climate of government-stoked hostility towards so-called “skivers and scroungers”, the fact that the campaign has achieved any reduction in levels of stigma is nothing short of a miracle.
Yet, as Dr Michael Smith noted in his editorial, ‘the wholesale shift in attitudes that we all want to see has yet to occur.’ When public attitudes to mental illness were surveyed, it was revealed that there was no significant improvement in either knowledge or reported behaviour. Directly after the intervention, medical students showed a significant improvement in attitude, but this tailed off after six months. Employers were more aware of common mental health problems, but, disturbingly, a large majority also noted that you should disclose these to a company before they hire you.