Understanding Stigma
Chapter 1
Stigma has no respect for facts. That makes it our business to try to set the record straight.
UPDATES
No updates at this time.
RESOURCES
General-assignment reporters are the first-responders of our business. Impressions created by their stories, especially dramatic ones, can be highly influential on the public mind, making stigma hard to erase. Learning the basic facts about mental illness, rather than relying on ‘common knowledge’ that can create or sustain stigma, is vital.
At any moment, one in five Canadians is dealing with a mental health issue. Recognizing how widespread the various forms of mental illness are in our society and realizing how many people recover from or work through their problems – just as people do with physical illness - is the first step towards breaking down the misconceptions and barriers that do so much harm.
More from the Globe's André Picard, Sarah Berry of McGill, and Michael Kirby of Partners In Mental Health
FEAR AND FACT
The issue of stigmatization by journalists of people with mental illnesses was raised in a Mindset town hall meeting in Calgary in March 2015. The evening’s topic was Fear and Fact: Challenges in reporting on violence, mental illness and justice. A journalism student with his own history of mental illness brought the issue up, speaking from the floor.
See the exchange.
JOURNALISTS WITH PERSONAL EXPERIENCE
If 20% of Canadians have a mental illness at any one time, at least one in five Canadian journalists do as well. Given the stress of our jobs, the figure could be higher. Increasingly, journalists are becoming willing to acknowledge their problems - helping to break the taboo.
In Kirkland Lake, Ontario, photographer and reporter Rick Owen frequently writes about his own struggles with depression and alcohol addiction - even though the size of the community precludes the relative degree of anonymity outside work he might enjoy elsewhere. He wrote this for Mindset:
Journalist with mental health issues calls for better reporting
As both a reporter and a person who lives with mental health issues, including addiction, I have very strong opinions about how the media reports on mental health and addictions. Click here for full story.
Julie Grenon worked as a journalist for TVA in Trois-Rivières, Québec, for ten years. At the age of 29 she was diagnosed with bipolar disorder. She still works for TVA as a web and social media editor, but she also lectures publicly about mental illness - holding herself out as an example of a person who proved it's possible to achieve a balanced personal and professional life while living with a serious mental disorder.
Raymond Décary has enjoyed a 30-year career as a Montreal-based producer/director with a long string of movie and documentary credits. Two of his latest documentary projects focus on mental illness.
Décary makes no secret of the fact that his interest in the subject grew from his own experience of 'mental fragility' - which showed itself first, as it very often does, in his youth. He talked passionately about that, and about his approach to the subject now, in this interview for Mindset.
For further information about many aspects of stigma, see the Mental Health Commission of Canada's extensive resources in: Opening Minds