Mental Health and Stigma
Mental Health and Stigma
Mental health is just as important as physical health. Our emotional, psychological, and social well-being should be prioritized throughout our lives, from childhood through adulthood. Despite the fact that mental health is just as essential as physical health, there is still a stigma associated with seeking treatment to improve our well-being or heal ourselves. Stigma is defined by some as a sense of shame or judgment from others and affects some populations more than others. .
Mental health influences how we deal with stress, make decisions, and socialize and interact with others. When a traumatic incident or stress occurs in our lives, it can have a significant impact on those aspects.
May is Mental Health Awareness Month, a time to spread awareness about how stress, trauma, and anxiety makes an impact on people’s lives. Mental illness affects one out of every five Americans, making it even more important to not only spread awareness in May but every day.
While mental health stigma impacts everyone, it affects first responders, healers, and caretakers in particular.
First Responders
85 % of first responders have had symptoms associated with mental illness. Many first responders, however, will refuse to seek help or treatment. The cause for this is stigma's toxicity.
Discrimination, shame, and even loss of status were all common categories of stigma for first responders. Unfortunately first responders suffer in silence. Because their jobs are considered as heroic in the public eye, requesting help or treatment can be seen as a sign of 'weakness.' Fear of negative consequences or being demoted or fired if diagnosed with a mental health illness/disorder are other reasons why first responders may not seek help.
Caregivers
Caregivers are no strangers to stress, and mental health symptoms. Whether a caregiver is caring for a sick parent, spouse or child, stress, trauma, anxiety, and depression have a significant impact on their mental health. Most people do not seek help during the difficult and long periods of caregiving. Stigma is at the forefront, just as it is for first responders.
Some caregivers experience self-stigma, which is defined as unfavorable attitudes and sentiments about one's own mental illness, including internalized shame. Caregivers may feel cut off or alienated from others around them. As a result of perceived stigma, caregivers of people with mental illnesses experience shame, low self-worth, and social isolation.
Some caregivers may not seek help because they are stigmatized by the belief that mental illness is genetic or hereditary. Also, some believe that by seeking treatment to ask for help, their sense of obligation to the person they are caring for is reduced. They feel 100% responsible for caregiving while balancing work, social life, and family difficulties, which can lead to caregiver burnout, a state of physical, emotional, and mental tiredness, and struggles of co- dependency.
To remove the stigma of mental health, the perception has to change regarding what mental health really is and how mental health services are beneficial for everyone.