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Internalized Stigma
Stigma around mental health is not an unfamiliar conversation in professional circles and, thanks to the hard work of countless teams and individuals, stigma is becoming a more common conversation in our communities, albeit a recent conversation. Prior to this work, stigma didn’t have a context...
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Associative Stigma: An Unseen Force Impacting Mental Health Professionals and Service Users
Stigma toward people diagnosed with serious mental illnesses is a powerful force with pervasive impacts, some of which operate in subtle ways. In explaining the broad-reaching effects of stigma, Goffman (1963) asserted that persons who are “related through the social structure to a stigmatized...
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A Cruel Irony: Less Mental Health Stigma but Fewer Behavioral Health Clinicians
Mental health outreach is more prevalent than it has ever been before. Efforts to encourage people to ask for help are seen online, on television, on college campuses, and in corporate headquarters. Many are sponsored by governments, but businesses, educational institutions, and foundations have...
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The Transformative Power of Families Helping Families
“I can now see that my loved one and their mental illness are separate.” I was fortunate to hear this powerful insight recently from one of NAMI-NYC’s participating family members. The National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City (NAMI-NYC) is built on the transformative power of...
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When Internalized Ableism and Stigma Intersect
In February of 2020, I received a letter from the government that I had been approved for disability payments. According to their records, I had been disabled with incapacitating, treatment-resistant depression since November of 2017. The Social Security Administration’s definition of disability...
