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Mental Illness Awareness Week

© Ian Chovil

Every year in Canada the first week of October has been designated Mental Illness Awareness Week. This year marks the ninth annual MIAW across the country. MIAW is a public education campaign, conceived and developed by the Canadian Psychiatric Association with the support of a host of allied mental health care organizations and volunteers. The overall slogan is "Let's Unmask Mental Illness".

To quote from their literature:

"Improvements in medical and community treatment for people with mental illness have been made and the public has become better educated about issues surrounding mental illness. Yet, the stigma perpetuated by myths about mental illness continue to exist, impair recovery and negatively affect the availability of quality care for Canadians with mental illness."

The objectives of MIAW are

• to destigmatize mental illness
• to provide information on mental illnesses and their treatments
• to promote public discussion and informed decision making about mental illness issues
• to promote a social environment in which it is acceptable to seek information and/or treatment in partnership with governments, consumers, and mental health care providers
• to improve knowledge of and access to appropriate and effective health care services

Each year MIAW proclaims a theme. For the year 2000 the theme is "Working with mental illness".

To quote from their literature:

"Stigma has created barriers for people with mental illness in all aspects of life. These barriers include such things as a lack of respect that can lead to a sense of shame that prevents people with mental illnesses from seeking and getting treatment, the inability to secure appropriate housing, and discrimination by employers who mistakenly believe that job applicants with a history of psychiatric illness are more likely to be unreliable and are a potential threat to other workers. The theme of this year's campaign focuses on how stigma affects the work place and the many dimensions of work issues."

Schizophrenia is often sugar coated by people who wish it would just go away. To talk about schizophrenia and employment in the same sentence never happened much in the past. Even today the unemployment rate of people with schizophrenia is something like 90%. Schizophrenia can be a very disabling illness. Those years of disability are very difficult to explain away when applying for employment. Those years of disability are a time when other people refine their employment skills, develop new skills, and raise families. Unless someone with schizophrenia had skills before they became ill, it is very unlikely they will acquire those skills while disabled.

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