Understanding Mental Illness: Means for Lifting the Stigma
As a victim of the debilitating mental illness clinical depression, I have a first hand knowledge of the terrible stigma attached to seeking medical help for this and similar problems. When the diagnosis was made, I told no one that I was seeing a psychologist. I feared what people would think of me and how they would react to one of their friends seeing a "shrink". Because mental illnesses are not well known and even less well understood, people tend to fear them. People who may be afflicted with mental illnesses often shy away from treatment because they fear that they will be labeled "crazy" or sent to an institution. I think that the stigma attached to mental health care could be easily lifted if regular psychiatric examinations were instituted, much the same as regular physicals. As people are exposed to the illnesses and begin to understand their origins and ways to help, this fear of people afflicted with the......
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Approximate Word Count: 577
Approximate Pages: 3 (260 words per double-spaced page) |