Link – Effective Messages to Fight Stigma

This is why, if you can, its important to tell your story.

Researchers, led by Emma McGinty, Ph.D., M.S., with Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, looked at the effectiveness of various communication strategies in reducing stigma and increasing public support for mental health policies. They found that communication strategies using personal stories of individual experiences, struggles and successes, can be particularly effective. The research was published in Psychiatric Services in Advance.

It’s so very important for society to see actual, real, living, breathing, human beings instead of “those people” when it comes to anything, but especially when it comes to stigmatizing mental health issues. As long as it’s something other people have to deal with, and no one I know, it becomes too easy to dehumanize sufferers. By having to deal with real people in our midst, it becomes much more difficult to do that.

https://www.psychiatry.org/news-room/apa-blogs/apa-blog/2017/11/effective-messages-to-fight-stigma