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Note that the author of this article, Dr. Ann Reitan, (AKA Dr. Ann Olson), has published a book entitled Illuminating Schizophrenia: Insights into the Uncommon Mind, available for purchase on the Amazon.com website.
It has been suggested to this author that stigma is a component of what is dealt with by the mentally ill. Combating stigma requires more than protesting it, attempting to educate others about mental illness and changing the labels we give to the mentally ill. As understood by the mentally ill, efforts to combat stigma can amount to criticizing, perhaps raging at the non-mentally ill for their seeming refusal to understand the mentally ill. Although a good idea, efforts for educate others about mental illness may be met with resistance due to the reality that others who are not mentally ill or psychotic do not really want to learn to what it is to be psychotic. Psychotic individuals can be paranoid--it may scare the non-psychotic to imagine what it is to be psychotic. Lastly, as has been suggested to this writer, terming the schizophrenic “perceptually different” rather than terming these mentally ill individuals by means of a diagnostic label represents an effort to combat stigma. In terms of this article, a genuine effort to combat stigma is elaborated, and practical advice for realistically dealing with stigma is offered.
Combating social stigma when one is schizophrenic or psychotic, in particular, amounts to cultivating of social skills. An effort to cultivate social skills represents personal growth entailed by enhancement of social ability in a number of areas. These include: (1) Group therapy and support groups; (2) Assertiveness training; (3) Cultivation a manners and etiquette; (4) Improving personal hygiene and wearing appropriate clothing.
Group therapy and support groups for the chronically mentally ill and the psychotic mentally ill will allow like-minded individuals to compare their circumstances not only in terms of dealing with mental illness: It allows these people to speak about various hardships. These include efforts to care for children, how to afford rent and groceries, the importance of persevering in terms of medication compliance, how to get a job---whether it is a paid job or a volunteer job. All of these activities will bolster not only mentally ill individuals’ personal efficacy, they will improve social skills as manifested by them, as well.
Assertiveness training is efficacious in educating people how to speak to others. It includes learning to make statements such as: “I feel bad when you speak to me in that way” or “I want you to understand my feelings”, instead of saying “You do that to hurt me” or “You never understand how I feel.” When the accusatory element is removed from communication, communication becomes more successful. Moreover, assertiveness training has a paradoxical component. It works for both socially timid people as well as socially aggressive people. It normalizes communication, and it allows for communication without a harsh, strident or accusatory elements.
Cultivation of manners and social etiquette is a crucial aspect of fighting stigma—even though these may seem to be superficial qualities and even though an emphasis on their expression may seem shallow. They are important. There is a reason why manners equate with “rules” of etiquette: these are rules involved in social interactions that that make violating them a reason for other non-mentally ill people to think the mentally ill behave in an inappropriate, shameful and even repulsive manner. The stigmatizing results of social rule violation by the mentally ill is hurtful to the mentally ill and psychotic individuals, in particular. Nevertheless, it is important to realize that manners are not morals, and some people tend to treat rules of etiquette as ethics.
Improving one’s personal hygiene and wearing appropriate clothing are crucial to success within social arenas sometimes occupied by the mentally ill. Perhaps nothing is less as opposed to more stigmatizing than the cultivation of improved appearance.
Even when the mentally ill and psychotic individuals in particular have little money to buy clothing, they can and do visit thrift stores that have a variety of appropriate clothes for people with little funds. This will allow them to improve their appearance. This writer also knows of a wellness center for the mentally ill that allows individuals to take showers at their facility, and this center out clothing at their facility. The avenues to combatting stigma by cultivating an improved appearance are more accessible than it might be thought.
It is clear that verbal and visual appropriate behavior in the social arenas occupied by both mentally ill and other non-mentally ill people is crucial to success in a way that combats stigma. Many mentally ill people seem to rage against the reality that perhaps they should combat stigma by their own efforts as opposed insisting that other non-mentally ill people should change.
The basis for changes to be made by the mentally ill and psychotic individuals in particular is elaborated in this article. Worth noting, however, is the fact that these suggestions reflect changes that may be made in behavioral terms and in terms of appearance. While these changes to the mentally ill person’s appearance may be successful in combating stigma, the mentally ill individual should not allow himself to be reduced to being an appearance instead of being a person. The cultivation of merely appropriate behavior, in particular, can and will be alienating and isolating. This means that the mentally ill should not allow appropriate behavior to become a wall that completely disconnects them from other people. It should be insisted that the mentally ill should person should share his internal worlds with compassionate others—others who know and care for that individual.
