Flo Bellamy
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| Does a diagnosis simply confirm another's weirdness? Photo: Juan Eduardo Donoso |
The Time to
Change campaign is the biggest mental health stigma busting campaign in the
UK, receiving an estimated
£21 million between 2007 and 2011. Given
this level of investment I would hope it made significant
differences to stigma surrounding mental health problems. The truth is that it hasn’t, and in some areas
of stigma, prejudice has increased.
In the 2011 ‘Attitudes
to Mental Illness’ survey report, many results were worrying. It appears that the percentage of people who
would not want to live next-door to someone who has been mentally ill has risen
compared to recent years. Also, more of the general public believe that someone
should be hospitalised as soon as they show signs of mental disturbance. It’s
also more probable that a woman would be considered ‘foolish’ to marry a man
who has suffered from mental illness, even though he seemed fully recovered.
And these are at the tip of the iceberg. When it comes to measures of tolerance of the
general public towards ‘mental illness’, a decrease was found. The percentage of people who agreed we need
to adopt a far more tolerant attitude toward people with mental illness in our
society dropped from 91% to 86%. Given the level of investment described in the first
paragraph, it’s worth asking why this is happening.
