WISCONSIN UNITED
for MENTAL HEALTH

You Can Make a Difference!

There are many things you can do as a teacher, parent, friend, pastor, advocate, employer, etc.  This section of our site can help you identify how you combat stigma in your own community, school, or workplace.

• Learn and share the facts about mental health and about people with mental illnesses, especially if you hear or read something that isn’t true.

• Treat people with mental illnesses with respect and dignity, as you would anybody else.

• Avoid labeling people and help others realize when they do
  • Avoid labeling people by using derogatory terms like “crazy,” “wacko,” “schizo,” “loony,” “psycho,” or “nuts.”
  • Avoid labeling people by their diagnosis. Instead of saying, “She’s a schizophrenic,” say, “She has schizophrenia.”
  • If someone in the media uses labels, write them a letter educating them about how their choice of words is derogatory or misinformed.  The following link is a sample letter from Stigma Watch: Sample Letter
    
• Support people with mental illnesses by helping to develop community resources.

• Respect the rights of people with mental illnesses and don’t discriminate against them when it comes to housing, employment, or education. Like other people with disabilities, people with mental illnesses are protected under Federal and State laws.

• Teach children about mental health, and help them realize that mental illnesses are like any other treatable health condition.
  
• Become a Peer Support Specialist
• Volunteer on a Council
  

Recommendations to Combat Stigma and Discrimination by the Governor's Blue Ribbon Commission on Mental Health

The primary tool for combating stigma is education. "... the remedy to stigma will depend upon our ability to understand mental disorders as being similar to other less stigmatized conditions that are also long-term condition but can be managed and controlled, e.g., diabetes, heart conditions, high blood pressure."

1. The Blue Ribbon Commission's first level of attention needs to be its own actions.
2. The Commission recommends that some amount of public funding be dedicated to statewide stigma reduction, to be used in partnership with even larger amounts of private funding for this purpose.
3. The state mental health system needs to educate and help consumers combat self-stigma, and teach families and the general public that a healthy life is both desirable and possible for a person with a mental disorder.
4. Consumers and family members along with mental health professionals must be involved in the effort to foster more understanding.
5. The problem of labeling needs to be addressed directly through education about the diagnostic process and its impact.
6. The mental health system needs to address the impact of stigma by making services more accessible.
7. The mental health system needs to reduce its own stigma toward consumers and their families.
8. Stigma needs to be addressed outside the mental health delivery system.
9. Current laws prohibiting discrimination in housing and employment need to be enforced, and new federal and state laws eliminating discrimination in insurance policies need to be enacted.