Mental Health

Mental Health

Introduction

Stigma as a phenomenon is important in medical practice partly because of medical conditions that arouse it and partly because of other characteristics that influence the way that medical conditions are addressed. Thus, mental illness carries a degree of stigma and that affects the degree to which patients seek help and the kind of help that is provided. However, poverty, age or lack of education can also be stigmatized and that can affect the treatment people receive for conditions such as heart disease (Fink & Tasman, 2002).

The concept of mental health within a public health context is both obvious and paradoxical. The connection is obvious because everybody experiences psychological distress within their lives at some point. Though not everybody will experience such traumas to a debilitating degree, some will (Leff & Warner, 2006). The process by which a person's mental health is mediated is inherently wider than a biological or psycho-pathogenic model. It must also be a social one, defined by functional relationships, distress to self and others and a perception within wider society of differentness and often dangerousness (Fink & Tasman, 2002). This paper presents an analysis of effects of stigma on mental health, sociological, and personal perspectives. Additionally, it assesses how the fear of judgment affects seeking help and what measures have been taken to break the barriers.

Causes of Stigma and Impact on Mental Health

Stigma can arise from a variety of aspects of medical conditions. Stigma is associated with disfigurement arising from the condition itself or its treatment, a reduction in perceived competence such as intellectual impairment or even hearing loss, behaviors that appear bizarre such as 'tics', frightening such as epileptic fits or dangerous such as delusional behaviors. It also arises due to conditions that are considered to have been brought about in part as a result of actions that are considered immoral as in AIDS, conditions that reflect adversely on a person's social position as can occur in the case of tuberculosis and poverty (Powell, 2000). It also includes conditions that affect body parts that are considered 'private' or 'dirty' such as urological conditions or conditions that reflect adversely on a patient's strength of character such as obesity and drug dependence or conditions that are judged to be at least partly self-inflicted (Quigley, 2007). The term stigma has a long lineage, predating the advent of the social sciences as we know them today.

It seems that different populations are more susceptible to mental ill health. Women are more likely to suffer from depression than men. There appears to be an inverse correlation of mental health between individuals from more and less privileged backgrounds. Those with higher levels of income and affluence are less likely to experience psychological distress than their less well off counterparts (Leff & Warner, 2006). Certain occupational groups appear to experience higher levels of mental disorder than others: people such as doctors, nurses, teachers, farmers and ex-servicemen are more likely to experience stress-related disorders. It is clear then that to approach mental ...