Community Connections, Spring 2002
"The
Elephant in the Living Room"
It
was just a few short years ago that OMH commissioner James Stone stood
before MHANYS' annual Legislative Conference and said, in effect, "enough
is enough."
He was talking about stigma. And reminding us that, important as it may
be for us to work toward improving services for people with mental illnesses,
our efforts will never be fully successful until we are willing to face
up to and address the issue of stigma.
He was preaching, not to the converted, but to the vanguard. MHAs have
a long history of challenging attitudes that label unfairly, withhold
respect, or depict people with mental illnesses as anything less than
fully dimensional human beings. Community Mental Health Promotion (CMHP)
teams are active and visible participants in this battle.
Media bias and the depiction of mental illness by the entertainment industry
are fair targets for anti-stigma efforts. Team Cattaraugus, however, has
chosen to focus on the "elephant in the living room" - the hulking
presence of self-stigmatization.
Self-stigmatization is corrosive, pervasive, and largely unreported. It
may also be the single greatest barrier facing consumers of mental health
services. A significant body of research has confirmed that victims of
long-term discrimination often internalize stigmatizing attitudes, apply
these attitudes to their own lives, and begin to view themselves as inferior
or unworthy. We need to change this.
Team Cattaraugus has sought to provide an alternative to self-stigmatization
by highlighting the achievements of men and women who have made significant
contributions to our culture while living with their own mental illness.
This focus flows naturally from past MHA initiatives that have included
several "Inspiration Walk" installations, in which plaques depicting
the words of famous men and women who experienced mental illness are placed
along community walkways; a "Mind for Music" concert, featuring
works by composers with mental illness; and publication of eight volumes
of poetry and prose written by members of MHA's award winning Creative
Writing Workshop. In each of these initiatives, an association has been
made between mental illness and individuals who are not only known - but
also admired.
While the response to these efforts has been overwhelmingly positive,
much remains to be done. As part of our 2001 project, two team members
facilitated a sigma dialogue at the local continuing day treatment program
that re-confirmed the degree to which self-perception is colored by stigma.
Other team members organized 16 training workshops to promote skill-building
and consumer awareness. Members of the Creative Writing Workshop presented
a well-attended public reading featuring works from their latest publications.
None of these is a magic bullet. And, of course, not everyone who has
a mental illness can be another Abraham Lincoln, a Beethoven, a Virginia
Woolf, or even an Art Buchwald. Neither can most of the rest of the world.
What we can and must do is to re-frame, re-focus, and re-define the perception
of what mental illness is - and what it isn't. And we can start with ourselves.
posted
4/9/02
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