Last October 10 was the “World Day for Mental Health”, an annual event through which the World Health Organization (WHO) recalls the importance of care and integration of people with mental inconvenience. This year’s theme was: “Dignity in mental health”.
But what is meant by mental health?
According to the definition of the WHO, with the expression mental health We refer to a state of emotional and psychological well -being in which the individual is able to exploit his cognitive or emotional skills, exercise his function within society, respond to the daily needs of everyday life, establish satisfactory and mature relationships with others, participate constructively in the changes of the environment, adapt to the external conditions and internal conflicts.
From the data it emerges that at least one in four citizens develops a mental disorder Within his life, in most cases consisting of depressive disorders or anxiety disorders. This is noted by the WHO, which presented a new European action on mental health action plan 2013-2020 with various actions to contrast mental disorders and improve the quality of life of citizens.
Depression alone is responsible for 13.7% of the load of disability (understood as years with which we live with a disability), placing itself as the first chronic disease in Europe. Following are the disturbances connected to alcohol (6.2%), Alzheimer and other dementias (3.8%), schizophrenia and bipolar disorders (2.3%each).
Despite all that is done, including this annual anniversary, many are still ashamed of the mental illness And they therefore tend to consider it as a personal defeat. Fear, shame lead to the gaze of the other, to prejudice.
In fact, patients often bring stories of deep pain related to shame for psychic pathology, where words psychiatrist, psychotherapy or psychotropic drugs they evoke experiences of diffidence. The disease therefore follows the stigma to which social discrimination is linked later.
The term “stigma” indicates that, specifically, the diagnosis of mental illness and behaviors that accompany it, awaken in people negative and refusal attitudes without there being a knowledge of the problem.
The stigma accompanying the mental illness It creates a vicious circle of alienation and discrimination, understood as the deprivation of rights and benefits, for the sick person, his family and the whole environment surrounding them, often becoming the main source of serious social isolation, phenomena of marginalization and a prolonged marginalization.
So the person who suffers from a mental disorder He finds himself having to fight on two fronts: on the one hand the experience of illness, with all that this entails in terms of suffering and disability and, on the other, with the reactions of the social environment and the stigma that surrounds mental disorder and which, in many cases, represents a real “second disease”.
Interesting on the subject, an article published in 2013 in the Journal of Community Psychology, where the authors claim that to decrease the negative effects of the stigma it would be necessary to insert social support and coping in the therapy.
101 adult subjects of an average age of 44 took part in the study. 40% had a primary diagnosis of schizophrenia, 19% of schizo -effective disorder, 17% of depressive disorder, bipolar disorder, 2% generalized anxiety disorder, 2% of stressful post -traumatic disorder, 1% of obsessive compulsive disorder and 5% of other pathologies.
The sample reported low levels of social support which, in turn, was connected to higher levels of social stigma and internalized and lower levels of healing and quality of life.
It emerges that people with mental disorders frequently use coping approaches that include both harmful and beneficial strategies. It therefore seems advisable to encourage these subjects to enhance the coping approaches that are responsible and oriented towards action and invite to the reduction of more harmful approaches such as keeping hidden, retreating and spacer.
Therefore it is important in the therapeutic treatment, helping subjects to understand how they relate to stigma And work both with patients and with families, in order to expand the individual coping repertoire in order to include more useful and responsible strategies.
The important role of social support in the process stigma it cannot be underestimated. Social support dampens the negative effects of stress and, specifically, of stress associated with stigma.
People with mental disorders who have the opportunity to experiment with emotional and concrete support from others, not surprisingly, they manage the stigma better, they make steps forward towards healing and tend to use less harmful coping strategies.
