Stigma on People with Mental Illness

Abstract

As a minority group, people with mentally illness are not deeply concerned with the society. Information mismatch and incomprehension lead to discrimination and misunderstanding. The purpose of this paper is to reveal this unfair discrimination in order to reduce the misunderstanding. Specifically, it introduces the specific mental illnesses or symptoms are more likely to be misunderstood by others, how discrimination was generated by people because of the inaccurate cognition towards mental illness, and the impact of discrimination on people with mental illness. The stigma not only harms patients in the process of socialization and integration of the society, but also influences patients families and daily life. These harms and disadvantages make patients suffer secondary hurting in addition to the disease. The expectation of treating this unfairness is that with the development of society and time, more and more people will understand the situation of patients with mental illness and be able to get along with them with a normal mind. Plus, it is the top priority of research to intervene such stigma and further reduce the negative impact on patients. However, due to the different implementation measures, the society lacks a real practice template. There is no real data on the effectiveness of the intervention. It is all theoretical, and there is no research based on the actual implementation results, which needs to be further addressed in future research.