Stephen P. Hinshaw's Blog: Stigma, Families, and Mental Illness
June 10, 2017
What Year Is It?
Is it really 2017?
The calendar doesn't lie. We're in the era of unchecked social media, the potential for driverless cars to take control of the roads in the not-too-distant future, global political turmoil, fast-rising artificial intelligence, and--pertinent to mental health--ever-stronger knowledge on the part of the general public about mental disorders. The post-modern era is upon us.
Indeed, with respect to mental illness, far greater proportions of the populace can now identify schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, anxiety, ADHD, and substance abuse disorders than ever before.
Yet there's a major disconnect. At the same time that public knowledge is greatly increasing, public attitudes are remaining flat or actually getting worse. Indeed, three times more Americans now link mental illness to violence than back in the silent 1950s. Overall, 'social distance'--the desire on the part of the public to be in contact with people experiencing mental issues--has not budged.
It's quite possible that the more we know, the less accepting we're becoming.
How can this be the case?
It may be that the stigma of mental illness is so deep-seated and so pervasive that even greater knowledge can't move the dial regarding strong prejudice and bias against those with mental challenges.
It may also be the case that, in the current era, deinstitutionalization has moved hundreds of thousands of individuals with highly serious mental illness from sequestered, snake-pit hospitals to urban streets. This practice has not only fostering homelessness and despair--in the absence of viable community services--but has also made the 'point of contact' with mental illness, for many members of general society, quite frightening.
Even more, many individuals are now fully aware that one of the few ways to become involuntarily committed to a mental facility, these days, is to be a 'danger' to oneself or others.
Attitudes toward gay marriage have drastically improved over the past two decades in our nation, but attitudes toward mental illness may well be worsening.
What can be done?
Reducing stigma is a multi-faceted journey. More on key strategies will appear in later blog posts. But one absolutely crucial step is to humanize those experiencing relevant symptoms and disorders.
That's why I've written "Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness"
(St. Martins, June, 2017).
In this book, I convey what it was like, growing up in the midwest in a seemingly idyllic academic family, only to have my father disappear, without warning or discussion, for 3, 6, or 12 months at a time, as if abducted by aliens. The doctors of the time had told him and my mother NEVER to discuss the real reason for his vanishing acts--lifelong, recurrent, severe mental illlness, and brutal mental hospitalizations.
As I'll go on to explain, the real answer to stigma involves humanization, narrative, and reality. That's the reason for this book. I hope to reach a wide audience.
The calendar doesn't lie. We're in the era of unchecked social media, the potential for driverless cars to take control of the roads in the not-too-distant future, global political turmoil, fast-rising artificial intelligence, and--pertinent to mental health--ever-stronger knowledge on the part of the general public about mental disorders. The post-modern era is upon us.
Indeed, with respect to mental illness, far greater proportions of the populace can now identify schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, autism, anxiety, ADHD, and substance abuse disorders than ever before.
Yet there's a major disconnect. At the same time that public knowledge is greatly increasing, public attitudes are remaining flat or actually getting worse. Indeed, three times more Americans now link mental illness to violence than back in the silent 1950s. Overall, 'social distance'--the desire on the part of the public to be in contact with people experiencing mental issues--has not budged.
It's quite possible that the more we know, the less accepting we're becoming.
How can this be the case?
It may be that the stigma of mental illness is so deep-seated and so pervasive that even greater knowledge can't move the dial regarding strong prejudice and bias against those with mental challenges.
It may also be the case that, in the current era, deinstitutionalization has moved hundreds of thousands of individuals with highly serious mental illness from sequestered, snake-pit hospitals to urban streets. This practice has not only fostering homelessness and despair--in the absence of viable community services--but has also made the 'point of contact' with mental illness, for many members of general society, quite frightening.
Even more, many individuals are now fully aware that one of the few ways to become involuntarily committed to a mental facility, these days, is to be a 'danger' to oneself or others.
Attitudes toward gay marriage have drastically improved over the past two decades in our nation, but attitudes toward mental illness may well be worsening.
What can be done?
Reducing stigma is a multi-faceted journey. More on key strategies will appear in later blog posts. But one absolutely crucial step is to humanize those experiencing relevant symptoms and disorders.
That's why I've written "Another Kind of Madness: A Journey through the Stigma and Hope of Mental Illness"
(St. Martins, June, 2017).
In this book, I convey what it was like, growing up in the midwest in a seemingly idyllic academic family, only to have my father disappear, without warning or discussion, for 3, 6, or 12 months at a time, as if abducted by aliens. The doctors of the time had told him and my mother NEVER to discuss the real reason for his vanishing acts--lifelong, recurrent, severe mental illlness, and brutal mental hospitalizations.
As I'll go on to explain, the real answer to stigma involves humanization, narrative, and reality. That's the reason for this book. I hope to reach a wide audience.
Stigma, Families, and Mental Illness
"Another Kind of Madness" is a deep-dive memoir about the doctor-enforced family silence related to my father's serious mental illness, when I was a boy. Little wonder that, once he opened up when I w
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