Mental Illness Stigma

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1 Mental Illness Stigma Although many countries have implemented anti-stigma programs, mental illness stigma is still pervasive in the current society. For example, countries like Canada, Sweden, and England launched national anti-stigma programs to change people’s attitudes towards mental health (Henderson et al., 2016). According to Schomerus and Angermeyer (2017), only perceived stigma has improved over the years, but personal attitudes against mental illness remain the same. People with severe mental illness continue to face increasing rejection. Beliefs about the biological cause of mental illness lead to more stigmatizing attitudes as they are based on stronger views regarding how dangerous and different people with mental illness are. Stigma consists of three socio-cognitive structures: stereotypes, discrimination, and prejudices (Sheehan et al., 2017). People with mental illness are commonly stereotyped as being incompetent, dangerous, and permanently ill, leading to discriminatory behavior against them. They face different types of stigma, including automatic, double, structural, label avoidance, courtesy, and self-stigma.


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