Stigma & Self-Stigma: Barriers to Living a Full Life
It takes so much courage to disclose any mental health disorder.
By Steve Colori
With stigma, there’s an assumed inferiority people have had while interacting with me. Even for myself, I have my own self-stigma that contributes to this feeling of inferiority at times. Over the years, I’ve had so much stigma towards my own diagnosis of schizoaffective disorder that I usually just refer to it as schizophrenia. This happens especially when disclosing the diagnosis to new people.
During these conversations, my emotions and my fear have been so high and it has taken so much courage to disclose any mental health disorder, that I usually just say schizophrenia for not wanting to explain what schizoaffective disorder is; this being schizophrenia with an emotional component, which for me is bipolar disorder. It’s felt a bit like a double whammy to be required to divulge two diagnoses as opposed to just one, never mind while they’re both labeled by the term schizoaffective disorder, which I never in my entire thirty-four years have heard mentioned on any television program whatsoever, never mind de-stigmatized. Having the awareness that it has never been mentioned and is completely absent from most people’s knowledge base makes it even more difficult to mention.
