For many of the 60,000 Wichitans who do not seek or receive treatment for their mental illness each year, their fear is often the stigma that too much of society still ascribes to mental illness. Yet that stigma comes from a lack of education and understanding by society of what mental illnesses are and from where they come.
By the very essence and definition of social stigma, it only works if broader society allows and creates a considerable amount of generalization; in other words, if we ignore 99% of who or what a person is in an effort to reduce them to the minuscule amount that we need them to be in order to fit within the confines of our negative expectations. As a result, when society becomes more educated – both in general and about the particular stigma-infused topic – those stigmas quickly fall away. Consider for example any number of cases of cultural and ethnic prejudice against immigrants in the United States during the 1800’s.
As a result, the clear response to social stigma is to increase the level of education surrounding mental illness so that the ignorance that maintains this stigma becomes harder to buy into. Only in this new culture will everyone in Wichita feel comfortable raising their hand to acknowledge their need for help, and the need for mental healthcare become as common and as strongly supported as the need for physical healthcare.
