The United States Has a National Prostigma Campaign: It Needs a National, Evidence-Based Antistigma Campaign to Counter It

Abstract

The publication of new findings on the United States public’s views on mental illness by Pescosolido, Manago, and Monahan (2019) is a punch in the gut to those of us who make the reduction of mental illness-related stigma our life’s work. Findings indicate that, between 1996 and 2018, endorsement of the expectation that a hypothetical person meeting criteria for schizophrenia is likely to be dangerous has not decreased but increased, such that now nearly 70% of United States residents expect the person to be dangerous. Parallel to this change has been an increase in support for the use of coercive methods such as involuntary hospitalization, even for a vignette of an individual with nonclinical “daily troubles.”