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I remember a professor in an economic history class telling us once that when you need money the banks won't lend it to you and when you don't, you can borrow as much as you like. Stigma works pretty much the same way. When your self esteem is crushed, and you're struggling to believe that you have the right to be alive at all, very few people will talk to you, but as you recover and become a more productive citizen you develop more and more relationships with more and more people. Schizophrenia receives the most stigma of all the mental illnesses per se. Depression is a much more acceptable illness to have and the stigma of having experienced a major depression is far less than it would have been even ten years ago. The stigma of having schizophrenia has decreased only a little in the last ten years. Depression is much more common and much more treatable, with the majority of people having a full recovery, although they remain at risk of further episodes. Schizophrenia on the other hand is a life long disability that is less treatable. The majority are likely to be marginalized by their illness, unemployed on the fringes of society. In fact the decrease in the stigma of schizophrenia is probably due in large part to the improved treatment strategies and atypical medications which have resulted in less permanent disability.
To have compassion for someone you have to be able to recognize the individual as a suffering human. If you appear less than human you will be treated as a second class citizen, as an "untouchable", the lowest caste in ancient Hindu society. Having been homeless a number of times in my past, I am amazed that no one took compassion on me as I wandered the streets in dirty clothes, talking to myself, without so much as a quarter to make a phone call, hungry because I was so disorganized I couldn't find the local soup kitchen. The older conventional medications controlled most psychotic symptoms but left people with blank faces, poverty of thought and speech, even a zombie like appearance. It was hard even for family members to recognize the person they once knew. To some extent there was a grieving at the loss not just of their relative's hopes and dreams, but of the very individual they once knew. The atypical medications have changed that a lot. One of the most common differences people noticed in me after I had started on
The copyright of the article Reflections on the Stigma of Schizophrenia in Schizophrenia is owned by Ian Chovil. Permission to republish Reflections on the Stigma of Schizophrenia in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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