The End Of Stigma

This innovative book investigates the roots of contemporary experiences of stigma, throwing new light on the phenomenon by examining a variety of long-term conditions. Behaviour, lifestyle and identity are no longer the results of mass-production by social class and nation, but increasingly the quirky and unique eccentricities of the individual as consumer, reflexive citizen and free agent. But if the hallmark of the post-modern world is endless variety and unlimited sub-cultural freedom, should we not be witnessing "The End of Stigma"? The book takes Fukuyama’s notion of "The End of History" and examines contemporary challenges to the stigma associated with chronic illness. Award-winning author Gill Green examines cases of HIV, mental illness and substance misuse, to provide new insights into stigma in health. She demonstrates that people with long-term conditions refuse to be defined by their condition and highlights their increasingly powerful voice. The End of Stigma? will be of interest to a wide range of students and health professionals in medical sociology, health studies and social care.

Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

This book makes a highly innovative contribution to overcoming the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness – still the heaviest burden both for those afflicted and those caring for them. The scene is set by the presentation of different fundamental perspectives on the problem of stigma and discrimination by researchers, consumers, families, and human rights experts. Current knowledge and practice used in reducing stigma are then described, with information on the programmes adopted across the world and their utility, feasibility, and effectiveness. The core of the volume comprises descriptions of new approaches and innovative programmes specifically designed to overcome stigma and discrimination. In the closing part of the book, the editors – all respected experts in the field – summarize some of the most important evidence- and experience-based recommendations for future action to successfully rewrite the long and burdensome ‘story’ of mental illness stigma and discrimination.

A compassionate and captivating examination of evolving attitudes toward mental illness throughout history and the fight to end the stigma. For centuries, scientists and society cast moral judgments on anyone deemed mentally ill, confining many to asylums. In Nobody’s Normal, anthropologist Roy Richard Grinker chronicles the progress and setbacks in the struggle against mental-illness stigma—from the eighteenth century, through America’s major wars, and into today’s high-tech economy. Nobody’s Normal argues that stigma is a social process that can be explained through cultural history, a process that began the moment we defined mental illness, that we learn from within our communities, and that we ultimately have the power to change. Though the legacies of shame and secrecy are still with us today, Grinker writes that we are at the cusp of ending the marginalization of the mentally ill. In the twenty-first century, mental illnesses are fast becoming a more accepted and visible part of human diversity. Grinker infuses the book with the personal history of his family’s four generations of involvement in psychiatry, including his grandfather’s analysis with Sigmund Freud, his own daughter’s experience with autism, and culminating in his research on neurodiversity. Drawing on cutting-edge science, historical archives, and cross-cultural research in Africa and Asia, Grinker takes readers on an international journey to discover the origins of, and variances in, our cultural response to neurodiversity. Urgent, eye-opening, and ultimately hopeful, Nobody’s Normal explains how we are transforming mental illness and offers a path to end the shadow of stigma.

The author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life analyzes a person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to people society calls “normal.” Stigma is an illuminating excursion into the situation of persons who are unable to conform to standards that society calls normal. Disqualified from full social acceptance, they are stigmatized individuals. Physically deformed people, ex-mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, or those ostracized for other reasons must constantly strive to adjust to their precarious social identities. Their image of themselves must daily confront, and be affronted by, the image others reflect back to them. Drawing extensively on autobiographies and case studies, sociologist Erving Goffman analyzes the stigmatized person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to “normals” He explores the variety of strategies stigmatized individuals employ to deal with the rejection of others, and the complex sorts of information about themselves they project. In Stigma, the interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America’s leading social analysts. “This short book established the conceptual understanding of stigma that continues to buttress contemporary sociological thinking.” —Sociological Review

Despite efforts to redress the prejudice and discrimination faced by people with mental illness, a pervasive stigma remains. Many well-meant programs have attempted to counter stigma with affirming attitudes of recovery and self-determination. Yet the results of these efforts have been mixed. In The Stigma Effect, psychologist Patrick W. Corrigan examines the unintended consequences of mental health campaigns and proposes new policies in their place. Corrigan analyzes the agendas of government agencies, mental health care providers, and social service agencies that work with people with mental illness, dissecting how their best intentions can misfire. For example, a campaign to change the language around mental illness by replacing supposedly stigmatizing words with empowering ones has made little difference in how people with mental health conditions are viewed. Educational programs that frame mental illness as a brain disorder have made the general public less likely to blame people for their illnesses, but also skeptical that such conditions can be cured. Ultimately, Corrigan argues that effective strategies require leadership by those with lived experience, as their recovery stories replace ideas of incompetence and dangerousness with ones of hope and empowerment. As an experienced clinical researcher, as an advocate, and as a person who has struggled with such prejudices, Corrigan challenges readers to carefully examine anti-stigma programs and reckon with their true effects.

How stigma derails well-intentioned public health efforts, creating suffering and worsening inequalities. 2020 Winner, Society for Anthropological Sciences Carol R. Ember Book Prize,Shortlisted for the British Sociological Association's Foundation for the Sociology of Health and Illness Book Prize Stigma is a dehumanizing process, where shaming and blaming are embedded in our beliefs about who does and does not have value within society. In Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting, medical anthropologists Alexandra Brewis and Amber Wutich explore a darker side of public health: that well-intentioned public health campaigns can create new and damaging stigma, even when they are otherwise successful. Brewis and Wutich present a novel, synthetic argument about how stigmas act as a massive driver of global disease and suffering, killing or sickening billions every year. They focus on three of the most complex, difficult-to-fix global health efforts: bringing sanitation to all, treating mental illness, and preventing obesity. They explain how and why humans so readily stigmatize, how this derails ongoing public health efforts, and why this process invariably hurts people who are already at risk. They also explore how new stigmas enter global health so easily and consider why destigmatization is so very difficult. Finally, the book offers potential solutions that may be able to prevent, challenge, and fix stigma. Stigma elimination, Brewis and Wutich conclude, must be recognized as a necessary and core component of all global health efforts. Drawing on the authors' keen observations and decades of fieldwork, Lazy, Crazy, and Disgusting combines a wide array of ethnographic evidence from around the globe to demonstrate conclusively how stigma undermines global health's basic goals to create both health and justice.

Everybody thought of me as the girl with the perfect life. Everybody thought that I was the beautiful blonde that made everybody smile. I, in fact, was fighting a battle inside my head every single day of my life. I was only 13 years old and the desire to die ate me alive until I gave in. I'm now 15 years old and I'm putting you in the shoes of living with depression, anxiety and suicidal thoughts. I know how much stigma and negativity there is around mental health issues, but if this book saves at least one life, all of the hate I get will be worth it.