News: Celebrities enlisted to fight stigma
Celebrities are using their platform to combat stigma and publicize recovery with new energy. Connie Francis, who was involuntarily admitted to psychiatric hospitals 17 times in nine years, is now working with Mental Health America in a continual battle to publicize recovery. "It is now my intention to be a voice for those suffering from mental disorders and to make them aware that there is hope and light at the end of an often bleak and interminable tunnel," she said. . .
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News: Rosalynn Carter active during mental health month
Since 1949, May has traditionally been set aside for "Mental Health Month" a time when advocates, book publishers, and not-for-profits are slotted into news coverage. This year bring attention to the publication of a new book by one of the nation's most respected and admired advocates for long over-due reform of mental health services, former First Lady Rosalynn Carter. Mrs. Carter has spent nearly 50 years as a spokesperson, and she is now touring. . .
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News: Prism Award goes to Jeff Bridges, Maggie Gyllenhaal

News: Teleconference on media and mental health

News: Crisis of college suicides
The suicide of a Yale University student has left the community mournful and in shock. The Yale junior who took his life in New York City last week is the latest in a rash at colleges in recent months. Suicide on college campuses is the second leading cause of death. Cornell University, which reports six this year, has taken steps to erect barriers at various bridges over the gorges. The student paper also knows this is a temporary solution. . .
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News: British campaigns ban mental health derision

News: Mental health in background of upcoming political campaigns

News: Princeton students discover lives behind diagnosis
When a class of Princeton students took the bus to New York City for a week-long student project, Sophie Jin's goal was to learn more about the lives of people with serious mental illness. A junior in the Woodrow Wilson School for Public and International Affairs, she and her classmates expected to see the workings of stigma. But after meeting and talking with consumers, psychiatrists, members of the helping profession, they discovered the rich, complex lives often dismissed categorically simply...
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Commentary: Rose Hill defends rehab model, deflects critics

News: Anti-stigma campaign draws millions

News: Violence with psychosis rare toward strangers
Worries about violence and mental illness have affected public attitudes and influenced treatment options around the world. Researchers in Canada, Finland, Australia and the Netherlands looked at "stranger homicide" as a way to answer the question about whether psychosis threatens strangers.
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News: Depression screening during Mental Illness Awareness Week

News: Doughnut war ends
Protests brought publicity, but the owner of a doughnut shop in Northern California sold out to his partner and thus ended the placards protesting Psycho Donuts in Silicon Valley. Insults and degrading decor are now also gone and, for a moment, there is a truce at the intersection where demonstrators once stood. "It was obvious that the owners didn't understand how offensive their mental-hospital theme was," writes Patty Fisher in the Mercury News. Now they do....
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Consider This: If you want to promote stigma
. . .check this out
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News: Stigma starts early in childhood
Children believe if someone tries hard enough, he or she can overcome ADHD or depression, suggest authors. . .
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News: Mental illness does not predict violence
A new study concludes that mental illness alone does not predict violence. For the past two decades, debate about a putative link between mental illness and violence has been heated with implications for policy, treatment and legal decisions. The authors of this study, published in Archives of General Psychiatry, interviewed 34,500 people in a national sample who were diagnosed with schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder and major depression. Their findings, based on interviews roughly 3 years apart, indicate that of the numerous...
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Consider This: Celebrities, stigma, and re-runs
. . .an update
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News: Black youth and suicide
After the on-line suicide of a 19-year-old from Florida, Newsweek online spoke with University of Michigan expert, Dr. Sean Joe. Suicide is the third leading cause of death for black men. Joe noted that stigma influences "the ways in which men perceive what it means to seek help for mental-health issues."...
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News: Resources for college students
To help colleges meet the needs of students with a mental illness, two resources were recently released. Building Bridges from SAMHSA is a rich resource describing problems students have encountered, offering solutions student consumers recommend, and providing community resources. The Jed Foundation makes available Student Mental Health and the Law which answers questions about disabilities, the law, and services. Each is available in a pdf download....
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News: General talks about PTSD and stigma
On the eve of Veterans Day, Army Maj. Gen. David Blackledge is reminding the country that soldiers suffering from war-related trauma can benefit from treatment. Blackledge received psychiatric counseling for the symptoms of PTSD while recovering from combat injuries he received in Iraq....
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News: Colleges proactive about mental health
The needs of students attending college while managing a mental illness are being addressed more openly than ever before. In the month of September, typically associated with "back-to-school" news, NPR aired stories about managing depression, and campus organization such as Active Minds, Graduate students are writing about how knowledge of one's illness can influence how to select a program. Last week the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law released a guide, Campus Mental Health with detailed information about legal rights...
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News: Colleges proactive about mental health
The needs of students attending college while managing a mental illness are being addressed more openly than ever before. In the month of September, typically associated with "back-to-school" news, NPR aired stories about managing depression, and campus organization such as Active Minds, Graduate students are writing about how knowledge of one's illness can influence how to select a program. Last week the Bazelon Center for Mental Health Law released a guide, Campus Mental Health with detailed information about legal rights...
Full Story | Topics: advance directives, colleges, depression, legal, stigma, students | Comments (1)

Commentary: Helping college students: PADs on campus
When college students need help because of a mental illness, schools often don't know where to turn. Helping college students: PADs on campus could offer an answer. Dean Anna Scheyett and Adrienne Rooks (School of Social Work, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) explain how psychiatric advance directives can enlist students, faculty and administrators.
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Commentary: Helping college students: PADs on campus
When college students need help because of a mental illness, schools often don't know where to turn. Helping college students: PADs on campus could offer an answer. Dean Anna Scheyett and Adrienne Rooks (School of Social Work, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill) explain how psychiatric advance directives can enlist students, faculty and administrators.
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News: Canada confronts and combats stigma
A Canadian survey released today shows widespread stigma persists, even among those who have been clinically depressed, according to Canwest News Service. The results indicate "a harsh, and frankly unflattering light on the attitudes we Canadians have," said Dr. Brian Day, president of the Canadian Medical Association. Day added, "mental illness is the final frontier of socially-acceptable discrimination." With a mandate for a decade-long campaign to combat stigma, Canada doubled funding for the year-old Mental Health Commission....
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News: High suicide rates for Asian-American women
Language barriers, insurance costs and cultural values, including family honor and shame, often deter Asian-Americans from seeking help. According to an article in Newsweek, Asian-American women between the ages of 15-24 have the highest rates of suicide of women in the U.S., and those over 65 are ten times more likely to commit suicide than their Caucasian counterparts....
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News: Beauty queen psychiatrist fights stigma
Dr. Gariane Gunter, a psychiatrist completing her training in South Carolina, was crowned Mrs. United States. According to the American Psychiatric Association, one of her projects includes fighting stigma about mental illness and she plans to start by teaching fifth graders and using Breaking the Silence, educational lesson plans designed by family and educators for students K-12....
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News: Canadian series on bipolar disorder
Inside Toronto continues its series about bipolar disorder with a story detailing speak outs aimed to diminish stigma....
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Consider This: When the press gets it right. . .
Three items of note
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News: Actor mobilizes Hollywood against stigma
A national campaign to squash stigma, “No Kidding, Me Too," is growing under the leadership of actor Joe Pantoliano. Calling for “equal rights for the brain,” Pantoliano, who struggles with depression, has been organizing the entertainment industry to spread the message about empowerment and acceptance. Last night he hosted the SAMHSA 2008 Voice Awards in Hollywood. One of the awards to representatives of the film industry went to Canvas, a film about a family coping with schizophrenia, in which he...
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News: APA panel: Liaison psychiatry at Walter Reed Hospital
Dr. Harold J. Wain discusses treating one soldier who was flown to Walter Reed Hospital with half her scull resting on her abdomen and another who picked up his severed arm so it could be reattached. These are two of 3,500 combat medical emergencies airlifted to the hospital as a result of the war in Iraq. Wain heads the liaison psychiatry service and he outlined procedures at the American Psychiatric Association for automatically placing psychiatrists on the treatment team prior...
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News: Mad pride grows
The growth of public events to celebrate the Mad Pride movement includes grassroots activities in seven countries with participants diagnosed with bipolar disorder or schizophrenia claiming autonomy and challenging discrimination....
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News: Hospital name controversial
Controversy surrounds reclaiming the name of a West Virginia psychiatric hospital built before the Civil War, the "Trans Allegheny Lunatic Asylum." "As a consumer of mental health services and an advocate, I'm personally offended by the term 'lunatic asylum,” said a spokesperson for the West Virginia Mental Health Consumers Association. A historical consultant for the 306-acre property doesn't get it, and compared these sentiments to Soviet style revisionist history. The new owners intend the property to host mud-bog truck racing....
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Commentary: Let's stop saying "Mental Illness"

"After more than three decades of doing this work," writes David Oaks, executive director of MindFreedom International, "I have found that we need to find some simple victories. Changing our own language is something that we still have control over. I want to emphasize, as I say in this essay, that my suggestion is not about political correctness or linguistic perfection, which are impossible goals.

My suggestion is that we can take a small step toward our principles by finding more inclusive ways of describing those formerly called "mentally ill."

Add a comment and join in this discussion.
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Consider This: Northern Illinois University
Events at Northern Illinois University remind us that complex problems need complex answers.
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Consider This: Mental illness and public safety: let's tell the truth
by Phyllis Vine

As measures to protect public safety with gun laws move through state houses, too often the word "dangerous" is being used to modify "mental illness." Do laudable efforts to halt violence belong on the shoulders of people with a mental illness? Isn't it time we started to wrestle with the truth?
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Consider This: Mental illness and public safety: let's tell the truth
by Phyllis Vine

As measures to protect public safety with gun laws move through state houses, too often the word "dangerous" is being used to modify "mental illness." Do laudable efforts to halt violence belong on the shoulders of people with a mental illness? Isn't it time we started to wrestle with the truth?
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Consider This: This campaign misfired
by Phyllis Vine

The Child Study Center withdraws "Ransom Notes."


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News: Disparities in care
Several articles in the December issue of Psychiatric Services (fee required) address cultural and racial differences in seeking psychiatric help, how language and ethnicity affect treatment, and how resources are spent. Conspicuous differences emerge, including “less care to persons in African-American and Hispanic minority groups than to whites,” according to one study examining disparities between 2000-2004. Stigma around mental health services might also explain ethnic differences for seeking help by women with depression....
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News: Ireland promotes work inclusion
Ireland's National Economic Social Forum (NESF) notes that work is a strategy for recovery that also dampens social isolation. A report calls for non-medical supports to increase employment, combat stigma, and provides models of social and work place supports. NESF estimates that loss of earnings due to mental illness costs about 3-4 percent of the GDP in Europe....
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Commentary: Depression, advertising and pharma
by Julie Donahue
If pharmaceuticals educate consumers, instead of targeting them for specific drugs, can they still meet the bottom line? These are among the questions Professor Julie Donahue raises about depression and advertising for antidepressants.


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Consider This: . . .from the APHA, Nov. 5-7
by Phyllis Vine
The American Public Health Association annual meeting in Washington, DC, has a number of events discussing a range of issues from Monday's session on empowering consumers in mental health treatments to disaster preparedness, school based reforms. Read summaries of selected sessions, including Dr. Ron Manderscheid's presentation about PTSD and returning vets.


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News: When a parent has a mental illness
Children with a mentally ill parent is not just a topic for feature films such as Canvas, but one that is beginning to receive attention with new books and an article in the Sept-Oct. issue of Social Work Today. Concrete ideas for answering questions, creating an accepting environment, and tools for helping youngsters who may feel a stigma, are enumerated....
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News: Print better than TV or film
The Australian anti-stigma organization, SANE, notes "television soaps used to focus on people's ordinary struggles, but [are] increasingly relying on lazy, sensationalist plot devices incorporating stereotypes of mentally ill people." News.com reports that the Australian government "announced $317,000 funding to help fund workshops, print and online resources for scriptwriters." Today's announcement coincides with World Mental Health Day....
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News: Panel reports on Virginia Tech
The Virginia Tech Panel Review investigating April’s campus shootings was critical of failures to link information and follow up for assailant Cho. It also clarified his history. Among its numerous concerns was whether mental health information should follow students applying to colleges. "It is common practice to require students entering a new school, college, or university to present records of immunization. Why not records of serious emotional or mental problems too?" The answer: "stigma." The Review recommended weighing this against...
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News: Diagnosis requires rethinking system
Speculation about what Seung-Hui Cho suffered has been silenced with news that it was a very rare form of anxiety disorder known as selective mutism. But the publicity given the shotting at Virginia Tech, and the wild speculation that followed, has probably led to a 25-year backslide in the fight against stigma, according to a Mental Health Association official in Virginia. Pundits were quick to label Cho with conditions such schizophrenia, aspergers syndrome, psychotic depression, or even demonic spirits. Now...
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Book Reviews: "Shunned," by Graham Thornicroft
reviewed by Jean Arnold
Anti-stigma activist Jean Arnold reviews a new book about bias and the author's suggestions for how to address it.

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News: Virginia probe unsettling
Knee-jerk reactions to Virginia Tech could easily threaten privacy and confidentiality, and promote social isolation and stigma, as colleges plan for the upcoming academic year. The panel probing mental health services on Virginia's college campuses held hearings, and one of the questions posed was whether schools ought to screen applicants for a mental illness, an alarming idea to some school counselors. A report is expected next month....
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News: Exposing cultural bias
Recovery Exchange and Mental Health Stigma.com have placed a high energy video on YouTube showing how the media promotes stigma. The producers term this "Media Lynching." The video contains vintage advertisements and book jackets, plus clips from horror movies and news broadcasts....
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Commentary: Breaking the Silence about Mental Illness in Schools
By Janet Susin
After her son was hospitalized with a mental illness, a Long Island school teacher learned there was nothing in the standard curriculum to help other students understand psychiatric disorders. Read about Janet Susin's campaign to change this and design Breaking The Silence.
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News: Quick response to question about NICS
PoynterOnline, July 11, 2007 Al Tompkins, a writer for the online journalism site Poynter, invited reader feedback to a story about the National Instant Background Checks System (NICS): "What would opponents fear would happen if the names of potential gun buyers who are mentally ill were reported to the FBI?" Jean Arnold from the National Stigma Clearinghouse told him, laying out facts and figures which Tompkins posted. Arnold's (longer) original is also available....
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News: Doctors biased against psychiatry
Psychcentral.com, June 25, 2007 “Once the medical team knows a patient has [a] psychiatric problem, they give them poorer quality of care,” says Britain’s Dr. Alex Mitchell.  Mitchell, and collaborator Dr. Darren Malone, reviewed 37 studies of the screening and treatment of people with and without a mental illness  at the annual meeting of the The Royal College Of  Psychiatrists....
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News: Mental illness and voting rights
For decades, the right to vote has defined participation in civil society. At one time the debate over who should have the franchise hinged on race, then on gender, and each expansion of voting rights signaled society's shift in social and legal norms. Now the question is being posed about people with mental illnesses. A story in the New York Times reports where the lines are drawn, and where some would like to draw them: legal insanity, incompetence, bipolar disorder...
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News: NICS targets mentally ill
Stigmanet, May 2, 2007 In the aftermath of Virginia Tech, Stigmanet identifies how renewed federal efforts to pass gun control laws, the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS), concentrate “on the mentally ill while ignoring huge gaps in the NICS database of criminal records.”...
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News: Stigma documented
Findings from a study out of Indiana University point to continuing stigma of people with mental illness. Between 30 to 40 percent of the respondents (N=1,134) said they would not want their child to become friends with someone who was depressed or had ADHD. This compares to about 10 percent who reported negative feelings when asked about asthma....
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News: VW pulls jumper ad
Bowing to pressure from advocacy groups, Volkswagen America pulled its controversial “Jumper” ad showing a man ready to leap from a rooftop because of the the price of (other) cars. While the New York Post said the ad aimed for the “funnybone,” the Suicide Prevention Action Network (SPAN) termed it “exploiting the tragic plight of someone suffering from mental illness.” SPAN commended VW for turning this around quickly in response to criticism from advocates. According to Adweek, which also commended...
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