Mental Illness and Stigma

The statistics are alarming. Leahy and Holland (2000) found that in a given year 30-40% of the general population will have a panic attack and 2-6% will go on to develop panic disorder. In 2001, the Canadian Psychiatric Association found that 7.9%-8.6% of Canadians over the age of 18 will meet the criteria for major depression at some point in their lifetime.

Attitudes towards mental conditions are disconcerting. Ignorance of mental illness leads the general public to believe that those who have a mental disorder can just "snap out of it" or that it's "all in their head". If a person with depression or anxiety could snap out of it, I believe they would. No one would tell a paraplegic to "just walk". No one would tell a person having a seizure to just "snap out of it". Why are people sympathetic to latter rather than the former? I believe that it is due to the fact that they're physical disabilities. People can't see mental disorders, but they can see physical conditions.

Though invisible to the human eye, a mental condition is a very real thing. It is hard for people who have not experienced depression on a personal level to understand its emotional impact and severity. For example, depression is easily disregarded as "having the blues" or "feeling down". Depression is a serious illness that has consequences for function and survival well beyond sad or painful feelings. Here is the DSM-IV-TR criteria for depression:

• Depressed mood
• Anhedonia (inability to experience pleasure from normally pleasurable life events)
• Feelings of overwhelming sadness and/or fear. Inability to feel emotion (emptiness)
• Change in appetite and marked weight gain or loss.
  
• Disturbed sleep patterns, such as insomnia, loss of REM sleep or excessive sleep (hypersomnia)
• Psychomotor agitation or retardation nearly every day.
• Intense feelings of guilt, helplessness, hopelessness, worthlessness, isolation, loneliness, or anxiety
• Trouble concentrating, keeping focus or making decisions or a generalized slowing of mental ability.
• Recurrent thoughts of death, recurrent suicidal ideation.
• Feeling and/or fear of being abandoned by those close to one.

This post started out talking about panic attacks. The most common panic attack symptoms include:

• Sweating, shortness of breath, racing or pounding heartbeat or palpitations, dizziness or vertigo, hyperventilation, choking or smothering sensations, tingling or numbness, trembling or shaking
• Racing and intrusive thoughts, loud internal dialogue, feeling of impending doom, feeling of "going crazy"
• Terror, or a sense that something is about to occur and one is powerless to prevent it, fear of death, fear of going crazy
• A distressing dreamlike sensation or perceptual distortion (derealization)
• Dissociation or a distressing perception that one is not connected to the body or is disconnected from space and time (depersonalization).
  

The stigma against individuals with mental illness affects whether or not they will seek treatment, either psychiatric medication or psychotherapy. Stigma also influences their psychosocial adjustment by hindering re-integration into the community. Knowledge is the key to knowing that mental illness, whether is it depression, anxiety, bipolar, or schizophrenia, is a very real phenomenon.