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Stigma Of Mental Health Essay

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Socially degrading attitudes are constantly being imposed on the mentally ill. When one is labelled as ill their views and beliefs are automatically seen as less credible than other members of society. Even today, the general public continues to discriminate not only against the individual rights of people suffering from mental illness but also their capabilities. Within our society there is a social stigma that is associated with mental illness which impacts the way one views and treats suffering individuals. These observed behaviors within members of society have inspired me to research how the stigma of mental illness leads to depression amongst individuals.
From a micro-sociological perspective, it’s important to look at the impact of …show more content…

To do so it is important to look into the research of other sociologists. Similar experiments have been performed in the past such as one performed by Micro sociologists: Lien, Yin-Ju Kao, Yu-Chen, Liu, Yia-Ping, Chang, Hsin-An Tzeng, Nian-Shen Lu, Chien-Wen Loh, Ching-Hui titled “Internalized stigma and stigma resistance among patients with mental illness in Han Chinese population” which was performed to determine the effects of internalized stigma on mental illness. One hundred and sixty patients previously diagnosed with psychological disorders were measured using the ISMIS-C (Internalized Stigma of Mental Illness scale) to determine levels of self-esteem, self-efficacy, depression and hopelessness. Scores were compared against the scores of patients without mental health issues and the scores “Demonstrated that psychotic patients experienced higher internalized stigma scores than those without psychotic diagnosis.”( Yin-Ju Lien, Yu-Chen Kao, Yia-Ping Liu, Hsin-An Chang, Nian-Sheng Tzeng, Chien-Wen Lu, Ching-Hui Loh. (2014).) Addressing how the stigma of mental illness can place an inescapable stress and burden onto the

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