Why is there such a stigma attached to mental illness?

Answer 1

because people reject what they don't know about or understand.

MY ANSWER

450 million people around the world are affected by mental health problems. Mental and behavioral disorders are common, affecting more than 25% of all people at some time during their lives. They affect people, regardless of gender, economic status, religion, race or environment. Depression, suicides, schizophrenia, epileptic disorders… the list is long and daunting. One in four families is likely to have at least one member with a behavioral or mental disorder. Families not only provide physical and emotional support, but also bear the negative impact of stigma and discrimination.

Answer 2

Difficult question. It's fair to say that in any pack species (like humans), individual behavior is always carefully considered and before far from the norm always gets a reaction -- sometimes good and sometimes bad. It's not uncommon for early societies to venerate some of their more harmless schizophrenics -- and in modern times Menniger has performed studies that show, if you take a paranoid schizophrenic with a HUGE amount of money and ideally some reverance, the reported symptomology is not all that grave! However, all societies react poorly to some forms of mental illness. Unpredictable combativeness, or actually any behavior that sets the community into a fight/fllght mode, will often result in the demise of the afflicted individual. Some of this is of course survival-related. In pre-history it makes sense that a man who screams on the hunt results in no game that day, and a bunch of angry peers. Behavioral problems that make an individual purely a burden and in no way a contributor to the tribe, make it so the voctim only has any sort of life expectancy (in those days) in a wealthy, nonmgratory society. I would guess the root of this behavior goes all the way back to the migratory pack we once were.

Answer 3

Yes, mentally ill people suffer from discrimination just like any other small group. In the past mentally ill people were said to be suffering from possessions or to be evil. They were treated as prisoners and lived in horrible conditions.

Unfortunately, today in the US, the health care resources for people suffering from mental illness is often inadequate or nonexistent. In too many areas, law enforcement is the only agency dealing with the mentally ill. These conditions in alone constitute discrimination.

Answer 4

Probably because it is hard for people to accept things that are outside their comfort zones. Emotionality is looked down on in our society between the genders, and the hyper-emotionality and histrionics that accompany some sorts of mental illness are perceived to be illustrative of people with no self-control, or drama queens (a term applied to either gender, incidentally).

The mentally ill are also blamed for homelessness and for bad work environments and so many other things. If you can blame something on someone not taking their Paxil rather than confronting a personality conflict or a societal imbalance, it is an easier way for people to deal with things.

It's also scary for people to feel out of control, or that something like that could happen to them. We tend to avoid things that make us feel scared or uncomfortable, and to label and push those things away from us. We make assumptions and stigmatize "those people" ... not only with the mentally ill, but with anyone outside our circle of acceptance and inclusion (immigrants, other religions, other races or lifestyles) ... in order to feel better about ourselves.

Answer 5

The very term "mental Illness" implies that one is incapable of rational thought and is somehow not bright enough or normal enough. Depression is caused by a reduced supply of seratonin, bipolar disorder can be improved with lithium-type drugs, etc. This suggests that these mental illnesses are physical maladies as much as Diabetes.

Answer 6

Because they don't see the potential to live and/or go to college and they automatically assume that just because people like me have a disability that makes us not as successful as other ignorant people who hate us and don't even stop to think that everyone has their own obstacles, also they don't pay attention to the similarities inside are bodies, Instead they judge us based on what we look like, sound like and based on our actions. All of this is little stuff. People don't like what they don't understand they just don't the time to understand us

Answer 7

Think how you would feel if you knew that your mind was slowly going to pieces.

Answer 8

Because traditionally they would slow down the hunting groups.