Mental Illness A World Full Of Confusion And...

To carry a mental illness, you carry a world full of confusion and misunderstandings. When someone has a mental illness, it impacts their thoughts, emotions, ability to relate to those around them, as well as functions in their daily lives. Because we can not see the problem, does not mean that there is not a problem. There are many people who has helped change and evolve ideas surrounding mental illnesses. There is a dark and sad history behind people who are mentally challenged, but the most progress of evolving the darkness surrounding it was a woman named Dorothea Dix (1802-1887). During her time, she volunteered to work in an all girls’ prison where she experienced watching the patients and prisoners be inhumanely treated (Parry, 1).†¦show more content†¦To whomever it is from, it creates a big impact in different ways. First off, stigma is consisted of four social cognitive processes called cues, stereotypes, prejudice, and discrimination (Cummings, Lucas, and D russ, 1). According to Cummings, Lucas, and Druss, cues are the labels, physical appearances, symptoms, social skill deficits and triggers the stereotypes; these are the negative structures that are related to mental illness, for instance, the idea that they are thought to be more violent in behavior. The stereotypes relates to the prejudice which is the rejection while discrimination is the behavior of the person rejecting someone with a mental illness (Cummings, Lucas, and Druss, 1). Adding on to the idea of stigma, there are two kinds, public stigma and self stigma. Public stigma is the societal response that the people have to the attributes of mental illnesses and can be a form of prejudice and behavioral reaction (Bathje, Pryor, 163-163). Self stigma is the psychological impact of possessing the characteristic and the impact of public stigma. Knowing what stigma is, one of the troubles that can occur because of it is the negative emotional response a person with psychological challenges goes through. Because of the prejudice and discrimination, it is a likely response for them to feel low self-esteem, shame, fear, and embarrassment, and because of the negative emotional response, it can lead to isolation or limiting their social