Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Illness

Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Illness

According to a report published in the Psychological Science in the Public Interest, despite the availability of effective evidence-based treatment, about 40 percent of individuals with serious mental illness do not receive care, and many who begin an intervention do not complete it (Corrigan et al., 2015).

“The prejudice and discrimination of mental illness is as disabling as the illness itself. It undermines people attaining their personal goals and dissuades them from pursuing effective treatments,” explains Patrick W. Corrigan of the Illinois Institute of Technology (Corrigan, 2015).

Stigma, notes Corrigan, is seen not just in the attitudes we hold toward those with mental illness, but also in the policies that affect them – from poor funding for research and services compared to other illnesses to “widespread, inaccurate, and sensational media depictions that link mental illness with violence” (Corrigan, 2015).

Public stigma, as witnessed in the pervasive stereotypes we hold toward those with mental illness, causes them to drop out of treatment early or avoid it entirely for fear of being categorized as violent, unpredictable, or dangerous.

Stigma also influences the structures designed to offer care to the mentally ill. The fact that mental health is not covered by insurance to the same extent as medical care, and the fact that mental illness research is not funded at the same levels as medial research are just two examples, notes Corrigan (Corrigan, 2015).

What Corrigan’s report advocates for is that we approach mental illness differently. By addressing stigma through showing another face of mental illness – the personal stories of recovery, hope, and humanity of those with mental illness – we take a step toward overcoming the most insidious – and often overlooked – barrier to care.

In time, Corrigan hopes, stigma will also be addressed on a larger level – through enhanced support systems, public policy, and actual systems of care – and will no longer be a reason that those who need mental health care will avoid it.

Related Online Continuing Education (CE) Course:

stigma of mental illnessOvercoming the Stigma of Mental Illness is a 2-hour online continuing education (CE/CEU) course that explores the stigmas around mental illness and provides effective strategies to overcome them.

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) defines mental illness stigma as “a range of negative attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors about mental and substance use disorders.” Mental health and substance use disorders are prevalent and among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment.

This course will explore the stigmas surrounding mental illness and provide effective strategies clinicians can use to create a therapeutic environment where clients can evaluate their attitudes, beliefs, and fears about mental illness, and ultimately find ways to overcome them. We will explore the ways in which mental illness stigmas shape our beliefs, decisions, and lives. We will then look at specific stigmas about mental illness, from the fear of being seen as crazy to the fear of losing cognitive function and the ways in which we seek to avoid these fears. We will then look at targeted strategies that, you, the clinician, can use to create a therapeutic alliance where change and healing can overcome the client’s fears. Lastly, we will look at the specific exercises you can use in session with your clients to help them address and overcome their biases and stigmas about mental illness. Course #21-24 | 2018 | 35 pages | 15 posttest questions

Course Directions

Our online courses provide instant access to the course materials and CE test. Successful completion of the online CE test (80% required to pass, 3 chances to take) and course evaluation are required to earn a certificate of completion. Click here to learn more. Have a question? Contact us. We’re here to help!

Professional Development Resources is a nonprofit educational corporation 501(c)(3) organized in 1992. We are approved to sponsor continuing education by the American Psychological Association (APA); the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC); the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB); the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA); the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA); the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR); the Alabama State Board of Occupational Therapy; the Florida Boards of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, Psychology & School Psychology, Dietetics & Nutrition, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, and Occupational Therapy Practice; the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker & MFT Board and Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology; the South Carolina Board of Professional Counselors & MFTs; the Texas Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists and State Board of Social Worker Examiners; and are CE Broker compliant (all courses are reported within a few days of completion).

Target Audience: PsychologistsCounselorsSocial WorkersMarriage & Family Therapist (MFTs)Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs)Occupational Therapists (OTs)Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs)School Psychologists, and Teachers

Earn CE Wherever YOU Love to Be!

Counseling Victims of Mass Shootings

New Online CE Course @pdresources.org

Counseling Victims of Mass ShootingsCounseling Victims of Mass Shootings is a new 3-hour online continuing education (CE) course that gives clinicians the tools they need to help their clients process, heal, and grow following the trauma of a mass shooting.

Sadly, mass shootings are becoming more widespread and occurring with ever greater frequency, often leaving in their wake thousands of lives forever changed. As victims struggle to make sense of the horror they have witnessed, mental health providers struggle to know how best to help them. The question we all seem to ask is, “Why did this happen?”

This course will begin with a discussion about why clinicians need to know about mass shootings and how this information can help them in their work with clients. We will then look at the etiology of mass shootings, exploring topics such as effects of media exposure, our attitudes and biases regarding mass shooters, and recognizing the signs that we often fail to see.

We will answer the question of whether mental illness drives mass shootings. We will examine common first responses to mass shootings, including shock, disbelief, and moral injury, while also taking a look at the effects of media exposure of the victims of mass shootings.

Then, we will turn our attention to the more prolonged psychological effects of mass shootings, such as a critical questioning and reconsideration of lives, values, beliefs, and priorities, and the search for meaning in the upheaval left in the wake of horrific events. This course will introduce a topic called posttraumatic growth, and explore the ways in which events such as mass shootings, while causing tremendous amounts of psychological distress, can also lead to psychological growth. This discussion will include topics such a dialectical thinking, the shifting of fundamental life perspectives, the opening of new possibilities, and the importance of community. Lastly, we will look at the exercises that you, the clinician, can use in the field or office with clients to promote coping skills in dealing with such horrific events, and to inspire psychological growth, adaptation, and resilience in the wake of trauma. Course #31-09 | 2018 | 47 pages | 20 posttest questions

Click here to learn more.

This online course provides instant access to the course materials (PDF download) and CE test (you can print the test to mark your answers on it while reading the course document). Successful completion of the online CE test (80% required to pass, 3 chances to take) and course evaluation are required to earn a certificate of completion. Click here to learn more. Have a question? Contact us. We’re here to help!

Professional Development Resources is a nonprofit educational corporation 501(c)(3) organized in 1992. We are approved to sponsor continuing education by the American Psychological Association (APA); the National Board of Certified Counselors (NBCC); the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB); the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA); the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA); the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR); the Alabama State Board of Occupational Therapy; the Florida Boards of Social Work, Mental Health Counseling and Marriage and Family Therapy, Psychology & School Psychology, Dietetics & Nutrition, Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology, and Occupational Therapy Practice; the Ohio Counselor, Social Worker & MFT Board and Board of Speech-Language Pathology and Audiology; the South Carolina Board of Professional Counselors & MFTs; the Texas Board of Examiners of Marriage & Family Therapists and State Board of Social Worker Examiners; and are CE Broker compliant (all courses are reported within a few days of completion).

Target Audience: PsychologistsCounselorsSocial WorkersMarriage & Family Therapist (MFTs)Speech-Language Pathologists (SLPs)Occupational Therapists (OTs)Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs)School Psychologists, and Teachers

Earn CE Wherever YOU Love to Be!

 

Cultural Formulation Interview

By NAMI and APA

cultural competence in healthcarePsychiatric and mental health in America has not succeeded at engaging people diagnosed with mental illness in their own care and empowering them and their families to become true partners with their providers. Misunderstandings and miscommunications can lead to dissatisfaction with treatment and sometimes even discontinuation. But when the whole of a person is taken into account, not only is the person likely to stay in treatment, they are likely to have a greater chance of recovery.

The APA is offering the Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI), including the Informant Version, and the Supplementary Modules to the Core Cultural Formulation Interview for further research and clinical evaluation. They should be used in research and clinical settings as potentially useful tools to enhance clinical understanding and decision-making and not as the sole basis for making a clinical diagnosis. Additional information can be found in DSM-5 in the Section III chapter “Cultural Formulation.” The APA requests that clinicians and researchers provide further data on the usefulness of these cultural formulation interviews at http://www.dsm5.org/Pages/Feedback-Form.aspx.

Online assessment measures, including the CFI, are available @ http://www.psychiatry.org/practice/dsm/dsm5/online-assessment-measures#Cultural.

The Cultural Formulation Interview (CFI) is a set of 16 questions that clinicians may use to obtain information during a mental health assessment about the impact of culture on key aspects of an individual’s clinical presentation and care.

The goal of the CFI is to lay the foundation for person-centered care and shared decision-making by encouraging clinicians to engage people seeking services and their families, from the very start, in a dialogue about how their cultural identities, values and prior experiences shape their care expectations and goals. But the CFI remains an underdeveloped tool. Clinicians and people living with mental illness need to know that it exists, and to use it to build a new type of partnership, without prejudice or stereotypes. All people diagnosed with mental illness have cultural identities, and our mental health system cannot expect any one of them to leave who they are at the door.

Treating the Mentally Ill

Discussing a psychiatrist’s objections to mandated treatment.

To the Editor:

Recent tragic events have linked mental illness and violence. Some people — I, for one — consider this link dangerously stigmatizing. People with mental illness are far more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators. Moreover, psychiatrists have limited capacity to reliably predict violence. Nonetheless, these events increase pressure to identify people who might conceivably commit violent acts, and to mandate treatment with antipsychotic medications.

For a tiny minority of patients who have committed serious crimes, mandated treatment can be effective, particularly as an alternative to incarceration. But for most patients experiencing psychotic states, mandated treatment may create more problems than it solves.

For many medical conditions, better outcomes occur when patients share in treatment design and disease management. Imposed treatments tend to engender resistance and resentment. This is also true for psychiatric conditions.

Patients with psychotic symptoms often feel that their own experience is dismissed as meaningless, like the ravings of an intoxicated or delirious person. Decisions to decline antipsychotic medications are often regarded mainly as a manifestation of illness — an illness the person is too sick to recognize — even though many people might reject antipsychotics because of metabolic and other toxicities.

When a clearly troubled person firmly believes that he or she needs no help, there are no simple answers. These situations are particularly agonizing for families. Safety is paramount — and at times can be elusive. Still, if psychiatrists humbly try to understand the person on his or her own terms, do not dismiss the person’s experience as meaningless and truly respect the person’s choices about treatment, sometimes this opens the way to an effective treatment relationship. For some suffering and alienated people — certainly not all — feeling respectfully understood can be a critical step toward recovery.

Mandated treatment is a blunt instrument that may drive more people away from seeking care than it compels into care.

CHRISTOPHER GORDON
Framingham, Mass., Jan. 28, 2013

The writer is a psychiatrist and an associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/03/opinion/sunday/sunday-dialogue-treating-the-mentally-ill.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0