Identifying and Reducing Mental Health Stigma

Misperceptions around mental illness have existed for centuries resulting in mental health stigma that creates an environment of shame and social blaming. By understanding the science behind mental health disorders and using strategies to reduce stigma, adults and educators can help students build mental well-being and include and support the many students dealing with mental illness.

Understanding Mental Illness

As adults and educators, we believe that every educational environment must be inclusive and welcoming to all students. We can celebrate vibrant cultures, recognize boundless gender roles, and identify shifting home lives. But the more we evolve, the more we see that there are also hidden characteristics and more discrete inclusions to consider.

Students affected by mental illness are a much larger population than most people are aware of, and they are in dire need of inclusivity and security against mental health stigmas in order to feel safe and able to learn. One out of five children will experience a mental illness.

Students struggling with mental illness themselves are not the only young people who might feel isolated in a stigmatized environment. Many students leave school to go home to caretakers or family members in psychological and behavioral crisis.

Mental Illness Misperceptions

While we know that mental health disorders are largely neurobiological in origin, notions remain that laziness, not trying hard enough, being weak, or having a flawed character are the reasons children struggle with disorders like depression, anxiety, OCD, and PTSD.

Children and adults who don’t understand the science behind mental health disorders often use words like psycho or weirdo, or they may call others crazy and poke fun at them or avoid them. Media, including television shows, news programs, and even children’s cartoons, often portray characters as “maniacs,” “lunatics,” or “sickos.” These kinds of portrayals create an environment of shame for children who struggle with mental illnesses. This environment perpetuates the phenomenon of social blaming known as stigma, and specifically, as mental health stigma.

The History of Mental Health Stigma

The word stigma is derived from the Latin term meaning mark. A person with mental illness was literally branded with a mark in a visible spot on their body, labeling them as undesirable. Though such markings have stopped over the centuries, mental health stigma around mental illness remains somewhat the same—socially labeling a person with mental illness as unsatisfactory. At present, stigma can be defined as “negative attitudes and beliefs that motivate the general public to fear, reject, avoid, and discriminate against people with mental illnesses.”

Mental health stigma includes not only the use of devaluing terms, but also myths such as that a child who has a mental illness is likely to be violent or dangerous. Or that mental illnesses can be contagious. Or that a full moon makes people less stable. Or that if you ignore it, a mental health disorder will go away on its own. Other myths suggest that bad parenting causes mental health disorders or that children and young people who are depressed or anxious are just being dramatic in order to get attention.

The Importance of Reducing Mental Health Stigma

Adults who express mental health stigmas let their personal stigmas set the stage for how they interact with others—and more importantly, how they tend to their own mental wellness and that of their children and students. Therefore, addressing stigma to bust the myths and bring science to the public is so very vital. Stigma brings shame and stress, especially in certain cultures, and reduces the likelihood that a child will be diagnosed and receive treatment for a mental health disorder. In fact, studies show that stigma is the greatest reason children and families avoid mental health care. Mental health disorders are treatable illnesses, with over 80 percent of those who get treatment finding success in reducing symptoms. But according to the CDC, only 20 percent of children who have a diagnosable mental illness receive treatment.

Strategies to Reduce Mental Health Stigma

We can help students affected by mental illness when we know about their struggles—when we know that the young man laughing with his friends also goes home and counts his mom’s meds to make sure she is staying healthy, that the girl giving her teacher a play-by-play from her game the day before lost her father to suicide two years ago, or that the student unloading his backpack to hand in his homework has guardians who ensure he sees his counselor three times a week.

But what happens when we don’t know? Students with mental illness in their lives are wrestling with inner conflicts while also trying to navigate a world that feels slightly less made for them. Because our society has had a slowly evolving relationship with mental illness, many students struggle privately.

By raising children to purge age-old mental health stigmas, we not only help them grow interpersonally, but also allow them the freedom to shed shame and embrace comfort. Here are some tips to help reduce mental illness stigma.

Speak About the Unspoken

Because they don't want to make individuals feel singled out, many people, including educators, might shy away from addressing mental illness. It is a sensitive subject, and many people feel embarrassed by the disorders they experience in their lives or at home. Though the goal is to ease this embarrassment, privacy absolutely should be respected. We don’t want to glorify or minimize mental illness in any way. However, teaching students that mental illness is only a small part of mental health not only reduces the mental health stigma, but it also makes it more approachable to teach. And we all should be interested in mental health!

Educate Yourself

Learn about how science is connected to mental health disorders. Once you do, you’ll see that anxiety, mood, or trauma disorders, for example, occur due to a combination of neurobiology and environment.

Educate Others

Once you understand mental illnesses, don’t be afraid to reach and teach others. People are often afraid of what they don’t understand, so giving others information about the origins of mental illness can create a new perspective and decrease the occurrence of mental health stigma.

Be Mindful of Language

Remind others about how words can hurt. Watch how you speak about mental illness and self-correct if you make a mistake. Consider highlighting how a news story, cartoon, or movie gets it wrong—and point out when the media gets it right!

Convey That Good Health Includes Mental Health

Make sure the message in your home is that good health involves physical and mental health. Teach others that well-being includes a balance of both. Mental well-being isn’t about suppressing emotions but about learning to identify our feelings and thoughts so that we can begin to understand them and ultimately feel in charge of them. The social and emotional curriculum that school counselors teach helps destigmatize mental health by offering education on how to find our own individual definitions of emotional well-being. Here are some tips for teaching about mental health:

Discuss the Brain

Explore all the wonderful ways that the brain works as a system in response to stimuli through basic neurology lessons.

Talk about Feelings

Ensure that students know that it is okay to feel all emotions.

Avoid Triggers

Triggers can breed isolation through journaling and discussing sequential events in a factual way without judgment. Teach students how to avoid triggers.

Speak Openly about Warning Signs

Ensure that you can speak openly about and look out for warning signs. Additionally, make sure that warning signs are tended to quickly and attentively.

Discuss High-Profile People

There are many people who’ve dealt with a mental health disorder who went on to contribute much to the worlds of art, culture, education, finance, history, literature, music, sports, and more. Consider the lives of President Abraham Lincoln, actor Harrison Ford (social anxiety disorder), choreographer Alvin Ailey (bipolar disorder), entrepreneur Richard Branson (dyslexia, ADHD), singer Mariah Carey (bipolar disorder), rock star Bruce Springsteen (depression), and Olympians Michael Phelps (depression, anxiety, ADHD) and Lindsey Vonn (depression) when you need to debunk mental health stigma.

Advocate for Community Change

For truly comprehensive results, the entire school or community must be involved in efforts to reduce mental health stigma regarding mental health. Though school counselors are the heart of social and emotional learning at a school, many supporting roles within schools can promote mental well-being. If you are looking to support students with mental health and wellbeing at the school or community, level, here are four tips.

Integrate Mental Wellness

Integrate mental wellness into your physical wellness curriculum in health and physical education classes. As you present information to students, emphasize that mental health is no different from physical health. The brain is a body part after all!

Provide Information to Students

Make informational materials readily available for students to use at their discretion. Cards explaining statistically common mental illness manifestations during adolescence and young adulthood could be made and displayed in a quiet area of the main office or other social areas.

Develop Support Staff

Offer professional development for school staff. Teachers serve students all day and see them in many different contexts, from critical thinking to socializing. Ensuring that teachers have the tools to spot concerning behaviors helps them know what to bring to a counselor’s attention.

Equip Advisors and Coaches

Create mini lessons for club advisors and coaches to implement. Students who participate in activities develop special relationships with student activities advisors. Arm these educators with small goals they can meet with their participants.

A Concerted Effort

In the last two editions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, around 200 new disorders have been added. This increases the likelihood that a child or student will be diagnosed with a mental disorder. It also shows that we are a diverse populace. We all have our own battles to face at one point or another—whether or not they are related to mental illness.

Normalizing discussions of mental health and destigmatizing mental and behavioral illness is in no way intended to downplay the importance of therapy and seeking professional help. The National Alliance on Mental Illness indicates that 20 percent of kids ages 13 to 18 have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. Of those diagnosed students, 37 percent drop out of school. Ninety percent of youth who die by suicide have been diagnosed with a mental health disorder. And 70 percent of the juvenile detention population has been diagnosed with a mental health disorder.

Caregivers and educators alike should all be diligent in our assessment of the behaviors we see in young people. Assisting children and young people in crisis comes before anything else, even when it means not being able to complete other tasks in that moment. Constant communication and rapport-building is one of the best ways to both assist children and families and create an environment of support and altruism for all.

Our evolving understanding of mental illness and the growing numbers of children and young people impacted by mental disorders reveal the critical role that caregivers and educators must play in identifying and reducing mental health stigma. With the strategies and tips in this article individuals and schools can help destigmatize mental illness as they promote education, mental wellness, and inclusion of all students in supportive environments.

This article is the combined work by Deborah Serani, Psy.D. and Stephanie Filio. Deborah is the author of Sometimes When I'm Sad. Stephanie is the author of Responding to Student Trauma: A Toolkit for Schools in Times of Crisis.