ACTION ALERT: Don’t Smear Me

Tom Fadden
Sep 8, 2018 · 6 min read

Mentally ill persons are often confronted with the terrible effects of stigma and discrimination living with diagnosable and serious mental illnesses. There is extensive research on the negative consequences of labeling and perceived stigmatization. These include demoralization, low quality of life, unemployment, and reduced social networks. Once assigned the label “mentally ill” and having become aware of the related negative stereotypes, we then expect to be rejected, devalued, or discriminated. This vicious cycle decreases the chance of recovery and normal life.

Society generally has a negative perception of individuals with mental illness. The stigma attached to mental illness is manifested by bias, distrust, stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger, and/or avoidance. It is often a barrier that discourages people from seeking treatment, especially in smaller towns.

The nation’s political leaders scapegoat the mentally ill. “This isn’t a gun problem, this is a mental problem,” Donald Trump told CNN in response to the killing of two Virginia journalists in 2015. “It’s not a question of laws, it’s really the people.” Off-the-cuff statements about a connection between mental illness and violent crime in the wake of senseless acts of violence only perpetuate the negative stereotypes and stigma that make it hard for people with mental health issues to seek professional help in the first place.

Calling the gunman a “very sick man,” Trump said mental illness is “a massive problem” in the U.S. He suggested more resources should be devoted to addressing mental health — hoping to prevent shootings like the one in Virginia, which he called “really, very sad.”

What are you asking of Congress?

  • Congress needs to heed the U.S. Surgeon General in that fighting stigma requires effective treatment options.
  • Submit a congressional resolution with many cosponsors that tells Hollywood that negative portrayal in literature, films, and television of persons with mental illness as being prone to violence are personally harmful to mentally ill persons.

You may phone the United States Capitol switchboard at (202) 224–3121 to be directed connected with a House member or senator in Congress in Washington, D.C. Identify all of your members of Congress and find their contact information at https://www.govtrack.us/congress/members/.

Talking Points of the No Smear Movement

STIGMATIZATION

  • The American people need fair and accurate information about the reality of persons living with mental illness. We seek to break down stereotypes and crush stigma, defamation, and discrimination.
  • Political and government officials, the news media, and the entertainment industry need to be accountable for smear, and their defamation admonished for exploiting persons living with mental illness for commercial gain or advantage.
  • What all goes into stigmatizing persons living with mental illness? Demoralization, low quality of life, unemployment, reduced social connections, rejected, devalued, or discriminated intent, ignorance, or insensitivity, bias, distrust, stereotyping, fear, embarrassment, anger, and/or avoidance, epithets, nicknames, jokes, and slurs, cruelty, prejudice, dehumanizing, trivializes the illness, negative portrayals in literature, films, and television of persons with mental illness being more prone to violence.
  • Research finds little has changed in media portrayal of mental illness over a 20-year period. Nearly four in 10 news stories about mental illness analyzed by Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health researchers in 2016 connect mental illness with violent behavior toward others, even though less than five percent of violence in the United States is directly related to mental illness.

THE STATS

  • According to SAMHSA’s 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health an estimated 43.6 million (18.1%) Americans ages 18 and up experienced some form of mental illness. In the past year, 20.2 million adults (8.4%) had a substance use disorder. Of these, 7.9 million people had both a mental disorder and substance use disorder, also known as co-occurring mental and substance use disorders.

SAMHSA describes who are the mentally ill in the United States:

  • Approximately 1 in 25 adults in the U.S., about 10 million or 4.2 percent, experiences a serious mental illness in a given year that substantially interferes with or limits one or more major life activities.
  • 1.1 percent of adults in the U.S. live with schizophrenia.
  • 2.6 percent of adults in the U.S. live with bipolar disorder.
  • 6.9 percent of adults in the U.S., 16 million, had at least one major depressive episode in the past year.
  • 18.1 percent of adults in the U.S. experienced an anxiety disorder such as post-traumatic stress disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, or specific phobias.
  • An estimated 26 percent of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness, and an estimated 46 percent live with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorders.
  • Approximately 20 percent of state prisoners and 21 percent of local jail prisoners have “a recent history” of a mental health condition.
  • 70 percent of youth in juvenile justice systems have at least one mental health condition and at least 20 percent live with a serious mental illness.
  • Only 41 percent of adults in the U.S. with a mental health condition received mental health services in the past year. Among adults with a serious mental illness, 62.9 percent received mental health services in the past year.
  • Just over half (50.6%) of children aged 8–15 received mental health services in the previous year.
  • African Americans and Hispanic Americans used mental health services at about one-half the rate of Caucasian Americans in the past year, and Asian Americans at about one-third the rate.
  • Half of all chronic mental illnesses begins by age 14; three-quarters by age 24. Despite effective treatment, there are long delays, sometimes decades, between the first appearance of symptoms and when people get help.

DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION

  • The Community Mental Health Centers Act of 1963 pushed for more treatment in community settings rather than in state-run, psychiatric institutions. The idea was to better protect the civil liberties of the mentally ill and to speed up their recoveries by living in more healthful communities.
  • A 2016 survey of Public Citizen and the Advocacy Treatment Center found that incarceration has largely replaced hospitalization for thousands of individuals with serious mental illnesses in the U.S., with state prisons and county jails holding as many as 10 times more of these individuals than state psychiatric hospitals. Because persons with serious mental illnesses are predisposed to committing minor crimes due to their illnesses, many end up being detained in county jails with limited or no mental health treatment until a state hospital bed becomes available for them.

SOLUTIONS

  • Experts believe that effective, state-of-the-art treatments vital for quality care and recovery are now available for most serious mental illnesses and serious emotional disorders. But getting these treatments provided for everyone is another matter. In 2013, Americans spent $201 billion to treat mental disorders, according to a Health Affairs report in 2016. This still is not enough. Research indicates that 45 percent of those not receiving mental health care list its prohibitive costs as a barrier.
  • Over 60 million Americans are thought to experience mental illness in a given year, and the impacts of mental illness are undoubtedly felt by millions more in the form of family members, friends, and coworkers. Despite the availability of effective evidence-based treatment, about 40 percent of individuals with a serious mental illness do not receive care and many who begin an intervention fail to complete it, according to a 2014 report published in Psychological Science in the Public Interest. Stigma is a significant barrier to care for many individuals with mental illness.

GOVERNMENT 101

  • For many years now, Americans’ overall opinion of the United States Congress has been dismal with an approval rating below 10 percent. Watching all the partisan bickering in Washington on CNN, MSNBC, or The Fox News Channel is very troubling. It’s enough to make you want to give up on our public officials, right?
  • What does ‘all politics is local’ mean? Basically this tidbit of political wisdom means that every member of Congress must always be thinking about his or her constituents in the local House district or statewide if in the Senate. After all, it is their job to represent you in Washington! Lawmakers care about the issues and problems affecting voters, as they should. If a national bill in Congress has local benefits, your members of Congress will want to vote to pass it. And in an upcoming electoral campaign, local news media watchdogs and opponents will check the member’s record to see how he or she voted and hold him or her accountable to voters. The bottom line is that you as an individual voter in this or that district or state has much more power than you might have imagined.
  • A piece of legislation, once introduced, moves through subcommittee and committee, then to the House and Senate floors, then to a House-Senate conference, and finally to the President for his signature or veto. But this gives a woefully incomplete picture of how complicated and untidy the legislative process can be, and it barely hints at the multitude of difficult things that a member of Congress must do to shepherd an idea into law, including dozens to over 100 conversations with colleagues.

BRAINY MATTERS

Serving America’s Mentally Ill

Tom Fadden

Written by

Collective Freedom

BRAINY MATTERS

Serving America’s Mentally Ill

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