Equity, Diversity and Inclusion E.D.I.

"Mental illness tops the list of stigmatized conditions in current society, generating the kinds of stereotypes, fear, and rejection that are reminiscent of longstanding attitudes toward leprosy. Mental disorders threaten stability and order, and media coverage exacerbates this situation by equating mental illness with violence. As a result, stigma is rampant, spurring family silence, discriminatory laws, and social isolation."

"Humanizing Mental Illness demonstrates that we need to challenge our explicit and implicit biases and learn to interact with mental illness in more intentional, supportive, and inclusive ways."

People who live with mental illness and their families often state that the stigma associated with their diagnosis was more difficult to bear than the actual illness. Stigma is all-encompassing. It affects the ability to find housing and employment, enter higher education, obtain insurance, and get fair treatment in the criminal justice or child welfare systems. Stigma is not limited to the attitudes and actions of others. Self-stigma relates to internalized negative stereotypes that lead people with mental illness and their families to adopt attitudes of self-loathing and self-blame leading to a sense of helplessness and hopelessness.

An extraordinary and moving book about the transforming power of family and community on "vulnerable" individuals--the mentally challenged, the mentally ill, the elderly--and how these efforts enrich us as a society."

Designed as a simulation workshop, participants listen to the audio CDs and "undertake a series of tasks including social interaction in the community, a psychiatric interview, cognitive testing, and an activities group in a mock day treatment program. The simulation experience is followed by a debriefing and discussion period."

This report, the first in the series, is entitled, Mental Health and Equality Rights: Mood Disorders. It presents statistics on how Canadian adults who reported having mood disorders fare in terms of education, employment and economic well-being compared to adults without mood disorders. It also looks at health care needs and experiences with discrimination.

This resource challenges key paradigms currently held about the prevention or reduction of stigma attached to mental illness using evidence and the experience the authors gathered during the many years of their work in this field. Each chapter examines one currently held paradigm and presents reasons why it should be replaced with a new perspective.

Mental illness has long been recognized as a cause of unemployment and decreased job productivity. More recently, a myriad of social, legal, and demographic factors have brought more people with mental health impairments into the workplace, resulting in considerable practical questions for employers, rehabilitation specialists, and other professionals, particularly on accommodation and retention issues.

"This book highlights qualitative research in early psychosis. The first half of the book centres on the individual lived experience of psychosis—from the perspective of the individual, the family, and the practitioner. The second half moves from the micro level to the macro, focusing on broader system issues, including medical trainees’ encounters with first-episode psychosis in the emergency room and the implementation of first-episode clinics in the UK and Australia. This text is timely, as the proliferation of early-psychosis clinics worldwide demands that we inquire into the subjective experience of those impacted by psychosis and the social contexts within which it occurs and is lived out."

"Disease and disability strike with a double whammy: Not only do they cause pain, distress, and loss, but they also trigger a social reaction, and the prejudice and discrimination that often accompany illness can be as limiting as the condition itself...."

"People with mental illness are far too often subjected to discrimination and unfair treatment. It is particularly unfortunate that much of this stigmatization comes from the very people they depend upon for help--those in the mental health professions. Too many practitioners and scientists maintain "us-versus-them" attitudes and are extremely reluctant to admit any personal or family experiences of mental illness. This culture of concealment must change, and this book will change it."

The experience of 'hearing voices', once associated with lofty prophetic communications, has fallen low. Today, the experience is typically portrayed as an unambiguous harbinger of madness caused by a broken brain, an unbalanced mind, biology gone wild. Yet an alternative account, forged predominantly by people who hear voices themselves, argues that hearing voices is an understandable response to traumatic life-events. There is an urgent need to overcome the tensions between these two ways of understanding 'voice hearing'.