Introduction
Stigma is understood as ignorance about mental health problems, prejudicial attitudes around mental health, and discrimination towards people with mental health problems. Experiencing stigma is sadly part of the reality of having a mental health problem. Many people report that the stigma around mental health problems can be as bad as, or worse than, the symptoms.[1] Stigma presents a barrier to accessing support, and undermines self-respect among people with mental health problems.[2]
Report contents
- Foreword
- Introduction
- Background
- Results
- Discussion
- Conclusion
- Glossary
Are we going in the right direction?
The Attitudes to Mental Illness research is designed to give a comprehensive and detailed account of the state of the stigma around mental health in England, and to track how this has changed over time.
The latest wave of Attitudes to Mental Illness research has revealed a mixed picture of the stigma around mental health in England. Following a decade of improvement, worryingly we have seen the first marked negative shift in some topline measures of the stigma around mental health in England in recent years.
Measures of mental health-related knowledge and intended behaviour towards people with mental health problems have both fallen back to 2009 levels. Attitudes towards mental illness have also in part regressed, and are now equivalent to 2014 levels. The data strongly suggest that changes in attitudes have been driven by a decline in trust in community mental health support rather than an increase in exclusionary or prejudicial attitudes.
More positively, we also found that attitudes in a workplace context have seen significant improvement since 2015 in both perceived and actual stigma (in other words whether respondents think having a diagnosis of schizophrenia or depression does or should make a difference to someone’s prospects for promotion).
Finally, the picture is also complicated by the reality that not all mental health problems or diagnostic labels carry the same sort of stigma. We found that there remains a higher desire to avoid someone with symptoms associated with schizophrenia than someone with symptoms associated with depression – but that this gap is narrowing and that levels of avoidance around both conditions is falling.
The rest of this report gives the background to the Attitudes to Mental Illness research, summarises the headline results from the 2023 wave, and discusses the significance of the findings – as well as what we can do to prevent backsliding in stigma and a worsening of the experience of having a mental health problem today.
The Attitudes to Mental Illness research has been the basis of a number of academic papers. For further discussion of the results of the 2023 wave of the Attitudes to Mental Illness, see Ronaldson and Henderson (forthcoming 2024), ‘Mental illness stigma in England: What happened after the Time to Change Programme to reduce stigma and discrimination?’.[3]
Notes
[1] For example, The Lancet Commission on Ending Stigma and Discrimination in Mental Health (2022) found that 80% of 391 respondents to a global survey of people with lived experience agreed or strongly agreed with the statement ‘Stigma and discrimination can be worse than the impact of the mental health condition itself’. See Thornicroft et al (2022), The Lancet Commission on Ending Stigma and Discrimination
[2] On stigma as a barrier for help-seeking behaviour, see Henderson et al (2013), ‘Mental illness stigma, help seeking, and public health programs’, American Journal of Public Health
[3] Mental illness stigma in England: What happened after the Time to Change Programme to reduce stigma and discrimination? The full Attitudes to Mental Illness 2023 report is available on request from Mind.