Mental health and stigma-aspects of anti-stigma interventions

Abstract

The chapter will give an overview of the history and actual status of three pertinent aspects of mental illness stigma: public stigma, discrimination and self-stigma, and the evidence for interventions to diminish stigma and discrimination. Stigma and discrimination are still important aspects of the lives of people with mental illness with negative consequences in a number of life domains. The stigma issue has been highlighted for several decades without any significant improvements in levels of stigma. A rather large number of anti-stigma programmes have been launched, although rather few have been systematically investigated. Some promising results from recent evaluations show that an evidence base for what is effective in reducing stigma is slowly growing. Two areas where further research is particularly needed are, however, long-term effects of anti-stigma interventions and the effectiveness of interventions to reduce self-stigma, which so far has not been thoroughly researched.