Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illnessAlyssa Schuibbeo Kutztown University November 10, 2015 1 Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 2 Abstract This paper explains the problem, that is dealing with a mental illness and stigmas related to it. The paper includes real life examples of victims being shamed for having a mental illness along with experiments done to show different treatments for a person or how much education kids in middle school know on this topic. Real life examples are taken from the article “disparities in minority mental health” as they address the authors day to day struggle dealing with depression and her financial hardships that arose because of it. Experiments done relating to different treatment plans and financially what would be the best treatment for each disorder is taken a little from each article to determine what different doctors think. As the experiment to figure out how much education kids in middle school have on this topic is taken from the article “Knowledge and attitudes about mental illness: A survey of middle school students”. This papers intent is to persuade the reader into believing that kids need more education on mental illness if we ever plan on stopping the stigma. Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 3 Stopping the Stigma on Mental Illness As you grow up you meet more and more people that come from different lifestyles and that have dealt with different situations than you have. The one thing that almost everybody, no matter where your life has taken you, can relate on is that we have all dealt with a mental illness at some point in our lives. Some deal with these disorders personally while others are on the outside trying to help those who are a victim of it. I along with many other people have experienced both sides of the spectrum. I grew up with depression that was brought on by a learning disability and living with a verbally abusive family, which all eventually lead to me having an eating disorder. Growing up constantly feeling like a disappointment and having to compete for attention and compete for help lead me to always feeling alone. I felt as if I was a lost cause and in the way of more important people. I cried myself to sleep for years to were it became the usual thing and I couldn’t imagine not being upset. I couldn’t imagine what it would be like to have someone who cared, who genuinely wanted to help me to were I wasn’t just a charity case they could brag about “saving”. I wanted so badly to be fixed because everyone around me made me feel as if I was broken. That because I wasn’t just like them I was the problem child, I was a flaw in society. One night, senior year in high school at two in the morning arguing with my ex-boyfriend, he had told me there was no point in me living. That destroyed me. Yet, that is the exact moment when I realized everything about myself. I can’t help what people say to me and I can’t help the way I learn, but what I can help is how I react and how I look at myself. I decided I wanted to change and thankfully I was able to get help either from friends or from a doctor. I had to under go a lot of doctor appointments and a lot of me being forced to eat trying to not throw up from the sight of food or from feeling to fat. It was something I wanted though. I wrote a lot and read about mental illness a lot because it was Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 4 a way to not feel alone on my situation. Knowing other people go through similar things and make it out happy comforted me. My friends were there every step of the way to tell me I was better then the words in my head, that I was better then what I had been told for years. Because of the help I received I was able to improve my situation and I now have the experience to help others. The mind is tricky however, which is why its so interesting to learn about in my opinion. People with similar situations can cope differently just like how the same treatment doesn’t always work for people that have the same disorder. When I was depressed the last thing I wanted to do was to eat or harm myself because for me that would mess up the perfect image that I was trying to uphold. All I wanted was to sleep. That was my method of escaping the life I thought I didn’t want. For others though, they look into harming themselves so that they feel physical pain instead of emotional. When you’re that desperate almost anything seems better then what ever you are going through and feel. Some eat because it comforts them, distracts them from having to deal with what is surrounding them. They can give their undivided attention to food. That is why my researched varied. One important topic I am bringing to the conversation is finance, because sadly your financial situation can and will effect the treatment you are able to get. Along with that you may also pay for a treatment that will fail you in the end. Another topic that will be discussed is how much knowledge children in early education have on mental illness. This is because the main point of my research paper is to inform those in the educational field that kids don’t know enough about this topic. I believe that if students learn at a younger age that it is okay to have these disorders and how to deal with them, we could stop the stigma against it fairly soon. Along Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 5 with that I believe the more knowledge kids have on these disorders the more they will be able to cope with them if they ever find themselves in a situation where it is prevalent. Mental illness can be something you’re born with but it may also be something that you have acquired due to situations in your life. The three most common disorders that you can get due to situations that you have experienced are PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), anorexia, and bulimia. A person typically gets PTSD from a traumatic experience like war or an abusive relationship. It can also happen from any traumatic event like a natural disaster or even a reoccurring dream. How PTSD works is that something will trigger a memory or reaction inside of you, sometimes it can be something you see that triggers this or it can be something you hear. It causes the victim to constantly live in fear, for they are almost trapped in that memory. Eating disorders like anorexia and bulimia are different though. First you must know that anorexia is where someone refuses to eat, they starve themselves, most of the time it is intentionally however there are some cases where people just forget to eat due to stress from their life. Bulimia is where the victim will binge eat and throw everything up before it can fully digest. Bulimia victims are different from anorexia victims not only because of their methods but because bulimia victims don’t always have to be extremely skinny. These disorders however can be cured with treatment and care. However, in some cases hospitalization may be needed (Community Mental Health Journal). A long with the many different disorders you can have, doctors normally separate them into two categories, either sever or non-sever. Server disorders are ones where they put your life in danger everyday to where you typically need to be watched or put in doctor’s care. They have both clinical and social needs and typically victims will take medicine everyday to help balance out the mix. Server mental illnesses include the following disorders; schizophrenia, dipolar Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 6 disorders, OCD, panic disorders, PTSD, bulimia, anorexia, and depression in childhood. Non server disorders consist of social phobias, anxiety, acute stress, ADHD (attention deficit hyperactivity disorder) and certain personality disorders. These illnesses normally only last a couple of years or aren’t life threating and can be tamed under prescribed medication. An illness like a personality disorder however, if it stays with you for more then two years can be changed to be considered a server disorder. This is because it then proves to doctors that it is a more serious problem occurring in your head and not just a “phase” that you’re going through. Or unbalanced chemicals in your mind. (BlueCross BlueShield, 2015) Depending on what category you fall into determines everything and yet nothing at the same time. The category you fall into determines things like treatments you will get, what insurance will pay for, how schools treat you and etc. However, in the long run because of the stigma that exists whether you have a sever or non-sever disorder some people wont give you a chance anyway. Lindsey Wahowiak, who is known to be a Latina feminist describes her struggle with varies mental illnesses and how they effected her life growing up. As Wahowiak talks about in her article (disparities in minority mental health) people see anyone who has every had or has a mental illness as a lesser person. Lindsey suffered from PTSD, depression and anxiety. From her experience she claims that she was treated so poorly buy employers who knew about this it actually caused her depression to get worse. It even caused her to gain extremely bad anxiety. She also claims that she wasn’t hired for some jobs because they thought that she was untrust worthy. As if her depression captured who she was a person, it didn’t matter that she told them the truth about her illness. You see this happening a lot in society though, people assume or stereotype right off the bat without giving a person an equal chance. By not giving someone a job because you’re scared or ignorant on their situation you’re causing them to then not have the Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 7 money to pay for help if they even need it. A point that really grabbed at my attention in Wahowiak’s cover story was that she talked about poverty. She went into great detail how if someone is in poverty they are more likely to develop a mental illness because of the situations that they are typically around. Its not ironic that they develop these disorders because of financial reasons and then can’t help them for the same reason. However, what is ironic is that something like the affordable care act that is supposed to give aide to those to can’t afford it, yet it does the opposite for them. Wahokiak describes how this act actually kicked people off of the treatment that they were currently on and in some cases made it so that someone doesn’t get any help where before they would. This is because there are new guide lines that they then don’t fall into and unfortunately they can’t afford to get help by them selves. This leads to them dealing with it by themselves and then getting stereotyped for it and their problems getting worse, and then the cycle continuous. In an experiment I came across in my research the author looked into different types of treatments and which would be the best for victims of mental illness. In this article the author talks about an experiment they did while studying different treatment plans for mental illness. What they mainly focused on was art therapy with it being extremely expensive and having a lot of skeptics behind it. The author states how they had two groups, the control group and the art therapy group and they did this study for multiple illnesses. One thing they did find out in this research is how depending on the disorder art therapy could actually make you worse. As it did in cases that included people with dementia. The therapy actually caused people to have more anxiety and depression in their day to day lives. However, with people battling other forms of mental illnesses such as depression art therapy seemed to do wonders for them. Verbal therapy in the eyes on this experiment is a waste of money and is too risky for those in a financial Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 8 hardship to take. However, at the same time because every illness is different and because every human mind acts in a different way reactions to each therapy can vary. Every reaction will vary actually, and because of that there is no one answer to which kind of therapy is cost effective and which one will help the person out more. But, the experiments can be taken into consideration when working with non-psychotic mental health disorders to determine which treatment might be better for you. Something that really grabbed my attention while researching was a study I found on kids in middle school. I hadn’t realized just how little knowledge I learned about mental illness until this study. It then led me to believe that education in this subject is highly needed. In this article (Knowledge and attitudes about mental illness: A survey of middle school students) it explains a study that was done to determine how the younger generation deals with people having a mental illness. It was meant to educate people at a younger age on what having a mental illness means. What they learned from the answers they got during their test was that its very likely any negative attitude towards mental illness is developed during the early ages. Most likely, they gather these attitudes and or stereotypes from their parents or other adults in their life. Another thing that they learned in this study was that children’s knowledge on mental health is very diverse, and that when it comes to symptoms relating to certain disorders they have trouble treating them with respect. Disorders that are more noticeable like an eating disorder or someone harming their body even multiple personality disorders are where children really seem to have a problem with showing respect. Its not so much that the child wants to make fun of another with these illnesses but more of they just don’t realize that there is actually something wrong. They may think the person’s weight is just different or they’re trying to be funny switching personalities. They’re ignorant with what is going on in their mind. Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 9 When it comes to educating the younger generation one thing I realized is that they don’t seem to really have a good understanding on the fact that you can have multiple disorders. Many students in the survey taken above believed that you could only have one diagnoses and that if you had more that’s what made it hard to sympathies. The children simply didn’t know that illnesses can share the same genetic make up in the mind causing it easier to get more once you have one. For instance, “depression, bipolar disorder, ADHD, schizophrenia, and autism are traceable to the same inherited genetic variations (Traci Pedersen)”. This means that basically each one of these illnesses can show symptoms of the other because of similar chemical make up in the mind. Which leads to people being treated for one disorder and then doctors realizing that there is another one that was just hidden behind the more prominent one. The biggest problem about stopping the stigma against mental illness is that new information is being found out every day. However, just because we still don’t know a lot about these disorders like exactly how they are caused or if you are ever really fully cured. It does not give someone an excuse for them to treat the victims of these illnesses with disrespect and hatred. Children are often referred to as sponges because they absorb everything that they see and hear. If we tell younger generations now and inform them now on mental illnesses, it will become a common thing. I look at it through history. My grandparents were not growing up when transgender and cross gender people openly discussed and showed themselves off. So in the 21st century when they do they are taken off guard and don’t know how to react. Myself however, it’s a completely normal thing for me to see. There is not need for me to react because I still see them as people which they are. I think the same goes for mental illness. When you’re young if people openly discuss what goes on in some others heads I truly believe that kids will see it as what it truly is and not as something that lesser someone else. If they can understand that Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 10 it is not an abnormal mental state and that someone is still capable to have a happy and healthy life, I think that the stigma will eventually die out from lack of ignorance. Its hard for anyone to fully understand someone. You don’t live their life and you’re not in their head. But being open minded going into any situation especially ones as serious as mental illness can honestly change someone’s life. You never know where life will take you and you never know if one day down the road you find yourself suffering with a mental illness. The more education and the more aware people are on this topic the easier life can get for those who are victim of mental illness. Running head: Stopping the stigma on mental illness 11 References Cusack, K. J., Grubaugh, A. L., Knapp, R. G., & Frueh, B. C. (2006). Unrecognized trauma and PTSD among public mental health consumers with chronic and severe mental illness. Community Mental Health Journal, 42(5), 487-500. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10597-006-9049-4 Levy, B., Celen-Demirtas, S., Surguladze, T., & Sweeney, K. K. (2014). Stigma and Discrimination: A Socio-Cultural Etiology of Mental Illness. Humanistic Psychologist, 42(2), 199-214. doi:10.1080/08873267.2014.893513 Pedersen, Traci. "5 Major Mental Illnesses Traced to Same Genetic Variations." Psych Central News. PsychCentral, 19 Aug. 2013. Web. 24 Nov. 2015. Wahl, O., Susin, J., Lax, A., Kaplan, L., & Zatina, D. (2012). Knowledge and attitudes about mental illness: A survey of middle school students. Psychiatric Services, 63(7), 649-54. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/1465226408?accountid=11920 Wahowiak L. Addressing stigma, disparities in minority mental health. (cover story). Nation’s Health, 45(1), 1-20.