Stigma of mental illness

Stigma around mental health has come from the 1700’s. Back then, the mind body dualism was thought of in 2 separate entities, so if there wasn’t a physical explanation they then turned to the brain. 

This was when it became legal to do dissections on people. The fallout of that for mental illness is that the explanations for that at the time was that maybe this person is possessed or insane and were placed in an asylum. This is where the stigma began to be formed.

Additionally to this, training around mental illness wasn't brought into medical student studies until the early 20th century. This lack of knowledge and understanding would have also played a role in mental health stigma. 

This lack of understanding, by both professionals and society at large, can play a huge role in stigma and has formed stereotypes. There can be lots of throwaway comments such as “I’m a bit bipolar today” which can dilute people’s experiences and can often be quite triggering for someone with a mental illness. 

One of the impacts of this is that many people who have a mental health disorder don’t want to go to the doctor and have it on their records.

There are ways that we can begin to break away from this shame and stigma around having a mental illness. Firstly, through recognising that we all have mental health, just as we all have physical health. 

Our mental health is on a scale, sometimes we can feel good and other times we can feel low. Good mental health looks different to all of us and that's why self-awareness is so important to be able to recognise when our mental health could use some TLC. Once we have this level of awareness, we can begin to change how we feel by changing our environment, or taking a break from work - whatever that looks like for you as an individual. 

Through developing this clarity of our mental health and what impacts it, we can start to build resilience to be able to better handle the situation. 

Last but definitely not least, it is vital to not forget that you're not always going to feel like this, it will pass. As Dr Rachel Evans said on our podcast “sometimes you are going to feel a certain way and you can't put your finger on it” and that’s absolutely okay. If you find yourself in this situation, start to think about the nice things that you can do for yourself to support yourself through this situation?

Rachel’s top tip for improving your mental health is to know that “it's okay to struggle with your mental health, remove that stigma and that shame for yourself. Begin to understand what you are going through. Give yourself permission to know that it's okay not to be okay”

If you would like to hear more on this topic, in addition to eating disorder recovery and hypnosis, head to our podcast which is available on Apple and Spotify. The episode was released on the 10th May and is called “Stigma of mental illness with Dr Rachel Evans”.