satisfactory health care, and affiliation

satisfactory health care, and affiliation

What does mental illness look like? Does it present physically with a muscular physique or a skinny body frame? Is mental illness tall or short? Is mental illness educated or a high school drop out?

Mental illness can be all the above. There is no “look” to mental illness, and nothing “looks like” mental illness. There is no face of mental illness, and it crosses boundaries of age, sex, race, and economic status. It is often invisible, and it is universal. According to Blakemore (2018), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 25 percent of adults in the United States have a mental illness. However, images can help increase understanding of experiences that can otherwise be hard to understand. Living with mental illness seldom looks like the stereotype (Sandler, 2017). Still, stigma and confusion about mental illness abound. In 2007, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration found that only 25 percent of adults with symptoms of mental illness believe people are caring and sympathetic to people with mental illness. Although most people with mental illness lead normal lives, they may experience discrimination or be blamed for their condition (Blakemore, 2018). Individuals with mental illness are targeted due to the mental challenges from the disease and the stigma as it relates to the misapprehensions from the disease. As a result of both, people with mental illness are robbed of the opportunities that define a quality life: good jobs, safe housing, satisfactory health care, and affiliation with a diverse group of people. (Corrigan & Watson, 2002). Mental illness continues to be a stigmatized healthcare issue in the United States.

References

Blakemore, E. (2018). What does someone with mental illness look like? A Museum Tries

to answer That. Retrieved from https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science

on April 26, 2020.

Corrigan, P. W., & Watson, A. C. (2002). Understanding the impact of stigma on people with

mental illness. World psychiatry: official journal of the World Psychiatric Associatio