Regarding article at: Mayor, MLAs agree: stigma around mental health needs to stop
Imagine what would happen were it to stop coming from their mouths.
The very first result would be, it would not appear [in publication].
I edited the Psychiatric Rehabilitation Journal, out of Boston University, but have also edited states' law, recognizing that inherent prejudices show up there. I do believe the news often makes the news, though not always intentionally.
When a prejudice holds the attention of a society, that in itself is revealed in a great many ways, including the language of journalism. Current usage of the term stigma is example. We have rejected several other once popular usages recognizing the harm each had done. Curiously we have not looked at the term itself as the issue. We simply accept re-directing it.
The implications of that term are far more important than those six letters. Its meaning has not varied, diminish, depersonalize, dehumanize.
Editors are indeed presented with a conundrum when someone employs it. Having the luxury of time, I ask authors to explain what precisely they mean by it.
One group, advising journalists, sent this advice, though indeed they have not abided by it:
• ----from one authority
“Stigma” has been used as an all-purpose term for the negative attitudes faced by people with behavioral health issues. However, increasingly reporters are using more precise terms, such as “prejudice”, “bias”, “social exclusion”, or “discrimination”.
** I cannot think of when it is “warranted” to accommodate anyone directing a stigma, or to use less than precise language. HM
A captioned podcast when you have time: STARR Podcast Harold April 2021 - YouTube
Despite recent advances, neuroscience and psychology still cannot fully explain many disorders of mind, thought, and behaviour—the manifestations of which still engender fear and stigma, affecting patients and the people close to them.
Our prejudices manifest them in many ways, the pretense of "stigma" is among them. Hitler pretended it for Jews, generations pretended it for rape; we continue to be instructed to pretend it for the above. It is a comfortable position for those directing it, not so comfortable are the effects of so doing. Perhaps one of the most negative contributions psychiatry has made is to conform to that pretense.
Oncology, on the other hand, faced with a public belief in the stigma of breast cancer, did itself not. The public followed suit and does not. The women's movement told us to stop declaring rape stigma, and, without one single voice objecting, we stopped.
What would happen were psychiatry to provide that same kind of leadership is easy to imagine. I do not envision even one voice rising in objection.
----We cannot criticize previous generations of physicians for their knowledge and well meaning interventions, although their unquestioning reverence for medical doctrine leaves me feeling uneasy.
We can, however, more scrupulously examine present generations.
Harold A Maio, retired mental health editor
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author, and do not necessarily reflect the position of this publication.
