Confronting and overcoming stigma of mental health challenges

Abstract

Mental health stigma remains a consistent and widespread barrier to mental health literacy, mental health treatment, and social equality. Due to the overarching effects of mental health stigma, many have formulated methods to reduce its prevalence and severity. However, many of the proposed reduction strategies are often focused on the sociological level, tackling large scale social institutions such as the healthcare industry, political policies, and mass media. While effective, many of these interventions exist on such a large scale that they leave many individuals with a sense of powerlessness, as most cannot hope to achieve large scale social or political change within a single lifetime. Thus, the purpose of this project was to locate, identify, and formulate possible mental health stigma reduction techniques that can be accessed and applied on the level of the individual within one’s day-to-day interactions. The concept and process of mental health stigma is discussed and dissected in order to formulate and contextualize effective and relevant interventions. Interventional methods are primarily focused on interpersonal interactional style, language usage, effective psychoeducation, positive between-group contact, and mental reformulation. This knowledge may be used to further one’s understanding of mental health stigma while guiding effective confrontational strategies.