While there is debate over the roles of biological susceptibility and psychosocial factors in triggering the onset of mental illness, it’s also worth giving some thought to how the illness experience is shaped by social factors vs. biologically-based symptoms. Once we are ill, we experience symptoms that are influenced by neurophysiological processes, regardless of whether […]
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As a nurse in my province (British Columbia, Canada), if I am hospitalized for mental illness then the provincial Health Professions Act requires the hospital to report me to the nursing regulatory college, and the college must treat this as a complaint about my fitness to practice. This ends up with being offered the non-choice
The Health Professions Act and the Fight Against Stigma Read More »
There are some good things about social media, but it also provides an opportunity for ignorance to get much greater exposure than it deserves. Some people would likely have a platform to reach large numbers of people even if it weren’t for social media. But the average science-naïve person who thinks that snow in one
Should You Challenge Ignorance & Stigma on Social Media? Read More »
Your Mental Health and You is written by Sandy Pace, whose blog I’ve followed for some time. He has a degree in psychology, lives with ADHD, and has experienced addiction. The book covers various areas of your life and your thinking where you could make changes to promote better mental health. It’s immediately clear how
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People tend to fear the unknown. Psychosis is arguably the group of symptoms that the average person finds the most frightening when it comes to mental health problems. There is stigma associated with many/most/all mental health conditions, but psychosis kicks it up a notch. What psychosis is As a quick explanation, psychosis refers to a
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Written Off: Mental Health Stigma and the Loss of Human Potential by Philip T. Yanos wasn’t available from the local public library, so I got a copy from the nearby university library. That difference in availability gives some indication of the nature of the book. I didn’t think it was overly textbookish, but at the
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I recently saw a tweet about the issue of cell phones on psych wards, and it stirred up a strong reaction for me. A man was writing about how he’d been advocating for his child to be able to have their cell phone on the psych ward, but this was flatly denied due to their
Cell Phones on Psych Wards—Yea or Nay? Read More »
Harm reduction isn’t an approach that was originally developed to help with managing nonsuicidal self-injury (self-harm), but it does offer a way to provide greater support to people who don’t yet have other strategies available to them to be able to go clean from self-harm. Addictions and harm reduction Harm reduction is most often used
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Alien Boy: The Life and Death of James Chasse is a documentary about a man with schizophrenia who was killed by police in Portland, Oregon. This film was funded by The Mental Health Association of Portland and over 1500 individual supporters, which I thought was pretty impressive. It’s an extremely disturbing example of police brutality against
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In my local health care system in Canada, the term behavioral health isn’t used, but I’ve seen it used a fair bit in the context of other mental health systems. As far as I can tell, it’s mostly an American term. Since it’s relatively new to me, I tend to consider it from a more
“Behavioral Health”: A Reflection of Structural Stigma? Read More »
