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Page 2
Olanzapine was greater facial expression, more intonation in my voice, less sluggishness. People started to
talk with me more, not necessarily because I had more interesting things to talk about but because they
could now talk to me as one human being to another. When I was severely ill and untreated, and when I
had just started on medication and was struggling, people tended to avoid me, but as I recovered and
became more recognizably human people became much kinder and friendlier.
The stigma of schizophrenia is to some extent self perpetuating. People with the illness reject the idea that they have schizophrenia and refuse to take their medication, because they aren't "schizo". As they relapse, become homeless, and frighten people, occasionally appearing on the front pages of the daily paper for murdering someone, the stigma against people with schizophrenia increases exponentially. With mental health services restructuring in England there has been an increase in untreated schizophrenia on the streets, with crimes committed by discharged patients reported daily in the newspapers. There has been a public outcry about "how safe are we with mentally ill people wandering the streets". It has in fact led to restrictions on the freedom of people with mental illness, with the opportunity to live in the community becoming a privilege, rather than a right. The truth remains that when treated, people with schizophrenia are more likely to be the victims of crime, rather than the perpetrators, but that kind of information doesn't make it to the public consciousness. There are also people who recover well from schizophrenia. The stigma of the illness prevents them from going public and changing the public perception of schizophrenia. I am very public about having schizophrenia, partly because I have nothing to lose. I've already lost everything. If I can change the stereotype of the schizophrenic by being who I am than I can more comfortably be who I am. More and more people are taking that attitude and it is slowly changing public perception. I have friends who get very upset if you start talking about schizophrenia in a public place like a city bus or a coffee shop. They don't want anybody to know they have been diagnosed with schizophrenia. It makes me wonder about how destructive the stigma of schizophrenia is. Not only do they suffer from a particularly destructive illness, they also feel ashamed about having it in front of other people. They hide
The copyright of the article Reflections on the Stigma of Schizophrenia - Page 2 in Schizophrenia is owned by . Permission to republish Reflections on the Stigma of Schizophrenia - Page 2 in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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