Psychiatric stigma

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Abstract
The first and last words on stigma belong to people with mental disorders. Shaw (1998) quotes the knee-jerk reaction to her book about her postnatal depression: “how can we believe this person's account to be credible when she says herself she was suffering from severe depression at the time”. Thankfully, only a minority of psychiatrists ignores such narratives. The seminal work by Goffman (1963) is annotated with the experiences of people who had been marked by a variety of stigmata. Barham & Hayward's project (1995) to tell the stories of people with schizophrenia living in the community is reminiscent of Goffman's work with asylum inmates. Read & Reynolds (1996) & Sayce (2000) provide longer accounts of what it means to have a mental illness. The reality of US psychiatric careers forms the major part of Fink & Tasman (1992) and Wahl (1999). The common themes of all six books are social exclusion, financial hardship and discrimination. A recent report, based on responses from 556 UK users, shows that 70% have experienced discrimination in some form: 47% in the workplace, 44% from general practitioners and 32% from other health professionals (Mental Health Foundation, 2000).

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