Social Stigma Essay

Research clearly identifies that stigma has been and continues to be attached to many social identities within society. The social concept of stigma involves at least to main mechanisms: 1) “the recognition of difference based on some distinguishing characteristic or mark: and 2) a consequent devaluation of the person” (Heatherton, 2002, p.3). In other words, stigma involves a range of discriminatory practices against people who are deviant from a social norm (Goffman, 1963).
Historically, people with mental illness were “viewed as being either divine or demonic depending on their behavior” (Videbeck, 2010 p.4), those that displayed demonic behaviors were de-valued, treated differently and excluded from society. This treatment was down to
This resulted in the closures of the large Victorian asylums (Gray, 2002). It is recognised that even though the public protested against asylum care, they were not accepting the mentally ill into the community (Goffman, 1963). This led the mentally ill facing further rejection and social isolation (ibid). In today’s society, even though there is effective treatment which allows recovery and reintegration of the mentally ill, (Gray, 2002) there is still stigma attached to mental illness “which affects the chances of a service user gaining employment or housing” (ibid, 72). Furthermore, Stigma has also been identified as a risk factor in regards to treatment seeking delay and non-compliance with medication, “which in turn causes great social and economic burden” (Shrivastava, Johnson and Bureau, 2012, p.70).
It is evident by research papers that stigma of mental illness is mainly related to the category of schizophrenia, which will be the focus of this dissertation. The aim is to describe stigma on the basis of qualitative accounts by people with schizophrenia and to compare this with public attitudes to mental illness and