The centrifugal tendencies of the stigma attached to mental illness

The centrifugal tendencies of the stigma attached to mental illness Mental illness stigmatises those who have it. The stigma then has a variety of consequences, nowadays all negative in most countries. In previous times and still today in some settings, symptoms of mental illness, for example hallucinations, were perceived as a privilege, a sign of being in touch with deities. This is, however, today rare. In most countries of the world the stigma of mental illness represents a terrible burden that the person with a mental illness has to carry, in addition to all other difficulties that a severe illness might create. But the stigmatisation of mental illness – marking the persons as being dangerous, lazy, useless for society – also has centrifugal tendencies. Members of the family of the person who has a mental illness are also marked as being affected by it in some way. Psychiatrists are considered as probably being mentally abnormal, because they are in frequent contact with their patients. Institutions in which people with mental illness receive care have a bad reputation regardless of the quality of care or the excellence of the staff working in them. The methods of treatment that psychiatry offers are seen as dangerous and harmful regardless of the evidence to the contrary. Medications prescribed for mental disorders are seen as being more dangerous than others. Any side-effect receives incomparably more attention than the same side-effect of a medication that serves for the treatment of other diseases: the agranulocytosis that might arise in the treatment with clozapine has been given incomparably more attention than agranulocytosis occurring in the course of treatment with chloramphenicol. Stigma of mental illness contains the notion that the person who has it is not of much value: as a consequence there is almost no treatment method in psychiatry that is not considered too expensive. The cost of the most expensive medications used in psychiatric treatment is much lower than the cost of many other medications. The cost of drugs used to cope with nausea arising in the course of radiological treatment of cancer in a single day is higher than the cost per month of most medications used in the management of a psychotic: yet it is the treatment of mental illness that is criticized as being too expensive (and is therefore not likely to be reimbursed unless a variety of conditions are met). Psychiatric societies as …