Stigma – “They need help!”
“They need help!”
How often have we heard or responded this way about someone with mental health issues?
Someone with a heart attack needs help yet this is not stated in the way we respond to someone with mental health issues. “He needs help” “she needs help” “they need help” is stated in a derogatory way without any effort to secure the help identified.
Stigma is so much a part of the ingrained response to obvious signs of people not being in full control of their faculties.
A person suffering from a heart attack may be reaping the consequences of a lifestyle that they were aware could lead to it.
The person challenged with mental illness on the other hand may have been through traumatic life experiences they had no control over. Because they may be physically fit their behaviour is seen by some as some laziness or unnecessary relinquishing of control on their part.
I recently attended a wellbeing event.
A survey result presented revealed that most people who suffered from mental illness believed that the workplace was responsible for their condition.
It was heartening for the first time to come across an awareness campaign by a major employer on mental health as a significant portion of Health and Safety in the workplace.
The mindset of people with respect to mental health needs to be brought to a level where they neither think little of the challenges of mental illness nor treat people affected by it any different from those affected by physical illness.
In reality, there are not always obvious signs that someone’s mental health has deteriorated to the point of illness. Often the last person to realise a poor mental health condition is the person affected. It can also be areas that someone is strong in that causes one to slip into mental illness.
It is saddening when capable people do not seek help when challenged with mental health problems for fear of appearing incompetent.
But there is merit in this concern. Significant segments of the population do not believe that people challenged with mental issues are by nature competent.
An interesting fact is that before 2013, someone who was challenged from mental illness could not become a Member of Parliament in the United Kingdom.
Hmm! Interesting.
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