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A PSYCHIATRIC MANIFESTO: Stigma is hate speech and a hate crime

Having witnessed the devastating impact of stigma on patients with mental illness throughout my psychiatric career, I am fed up and disgusted with this malevolent scourge.

I regard the stigma that engulfs neuropsychiatric disorders as a malignancy that mutilates patients’ souls and hastens their mortality.

Stigma is hate speech

How would you feel if you had a serious medical illness, a disabling brain disorder such as schizophrenia, depression, or anxiety, and people refer to you with pejorative and insulting terms such as crazy, deranged, lunatic, unhinged, nutty, insane, wacky, berserk, cuckoo, bonkers, flaky, screwball, or unglued? This is hate speech generated by stigma against people with mental illness. Individuals with heart disease, cancer, or diabetes never get called such disgraceful and stigmatizing terms that shame, stain, besmirch, and scar them, which happens daily to persons with psychiatric brain disorders.

The damage and harm of the discriminatory stigma on our patients is multifaceted. It is painful, detrimental, pernicious, and deleterious. It is corrosive to their spirits, crippling to their self-image, and subversive to their self-confidence. Hate speech is not simply words, but a menacing weapon that assaults the core humanity of medically ill psychiatric patients.

Although hate speech is punishable by law, there are rarely any legal actions against those who hurl hate speech at psychiatric patients every day. Society has institutionalized the stigma of mental illness and takes it in stride instead of recognizing it as an illegal, harmful act.

Long before the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, 43% of the population had been shown to experience a diagnosable psychiatric disorder over the course of their life.1 Thus, tens of millions of people are burdened by stigma and the hate speech associated with it. This is directly related to massive ignorance about mental illness being the result of a neurobiological condition due to either genetic or intrauterine adverse events that disrupt brain development. Delusions and hallucinations are symptoms of a malfunctioning brain, depression is not a sign of personal weakness, anxiety is the most prevalent mental disorder in the world, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is not odd behavior but the result of dysfunction of neural circuits. Correcting public misperceptions about psychiatric brain disorders can mitigate stigma, but it has yet to happen.

Stigma is a hate crime

Stigma can accelerate physical death and premature mortality. Many studies have confirmed that persons with schizophrenia do not receive basic primary care treatments for the life-shortening medical conditions that often afflict them, such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.2 Stigma is responsible for a significant disparity of medical3-5 and intensive care6 among individuals with mental illness compared to the general population. It’s no wonder most psychiatric disorders are associated with accelerated mortality.7 A recent study during the pandemic by Balasuriya et al8 reported that patients with depression had poor access to care. Stigma interferes with or delays necessary medical care, leading to clinical deterioration and unnecessary, preventable death. Stigma shortens life and is a hate crime.

Continue to: The extremely high suicide rates...

 

 

The extremely high suicide rates among individuals with serious mental illness, who live under the oppressiveness of stigma, is another example of how stigma is a hate crime that can cause patients with psychiatric disorders to give up and end their lives. Zaheer et al9 found that young patients with schizophrenia had an astronomical suicide rate compared to the general population (1 in 52 in individuals with schizophrenia, compared to 12 in 100,000 in the general population, roughly a 200-fold increase!). This is clearly a consequence of stigma and discrimination,10 which leads to demoralization, shame, loneliness, distress, and hopelessness. Stigma can be fatal, and that makes it a hate crime.

Stigma also limits vocational opportunities for individuals with mental illness. They are either not hired, or quickly fired. Even highly educated professionals such as physicians, nurses, lawyers, or teachers can lose their jobs if they divulge a history of a psychiatric disorder or alcohol or substance abuse, regardless of whether they are receiving treatment and are medically in remission. Even highly qualified politicians have been deemed “ineligible” for higher office if they disclose a history of psychiatric treatment. Stigma is loaded with outrageous discrimination that deprives our patients of “the pursuit of happiness,” a fundamental constitutional right.

Stigma surrounding the mental health professions

Stigma also engulfs mental health professionals, simply because they deal with psychiatric patients every day. In a classic article titled “The Enigma of Stigma,”11 Dr. Paul Fink, past president of the American Psychiatric Association (1988-1989), described how psychiatrists are perceived as “different” from other physicians by the public and by the media. He said psychiatrists are tarred by the same brush as their patients as “undesirables” in society. And movies such as Psycho and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reinforce the stigma against both psychiatric patients and the psychiatrists and nurses who treat them. The health care system that carves out “behavioral health” from the umbrella of “medical care” further accentuates the stigma by portraying the “separateness” of psychiatry, a genuine medical specialty, from its fellow medical disciplines. This becomes fodder for the antipsychiatry movement at every turn and can even lead to questioning the existence of mental illness, as Thomas Szasz12 did by declaring that mental illness is a myth and describing psychiatry as “the science of lies.” No other medical specialty endures abuse and insults like psychiatry, and that’s a direct result of stigma.

Extinguishing stigma is a societal imperative

So what can be done to squelch stigma and defeat it once and for all, so that psychiatric patients can be treated with dignity and compassion, like people with cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, or brain tumors? The pandemic, terrible as it has been for the entire world, did have the silver lining of raising awareness about the ubiquity of psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, across all ages, genders, educational and religious backgrounds, and socioeconomic classes. But there should also be a robust legal battle against the damaging effects of stigma. There are laws to sanction and penalize hate speech and hate crimes that must be implemented when stigma is documented. There are also parity laws, but they have no teeth and have not ameliorated the insurance discrepancies and economic burden of psychiatric disorders. A bold step would be to reclassify serious psychiatric brain disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, OCD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, generalized anxiety disorder/panic attacks, and borderline personality disorder) as neurologic disorders, which would automatically give patients with these disorders broad access to medical care, which happened when autism was reclassified as a neurologic disorder. Finally, a much more intensive public education must be disseminated about the neurobiological etiologies, brain structure, and function in psychiatric disorders, and the psychiatric symptoms associated with all neurologic disorders. Regrettably, empathy can be difficult to teach.

Stigma is hate speech and a hate crime. It must be permanently eliminated by effective laws and by erasing the widespread ignorance about the medical and neurologic roots of mental disorders, and by emphasizing the fact that they are as treatable as other general medical conditions.

References

1. Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O, et al. Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62(6):593-602.
2. Nasrallah HA, Meyer JM, Goff DC, et al. Low rates of treatment for hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes in schizophrenia: data from the CATIE schizophrenia trial sample at baseline. Schizophr Res. 2006;86(1-3):15-22.
3. Druss BG, Rosenheck RA. Use of medical services by veterans with mental disorders. Psychosomatics. 1997;38(5):451-458.
4. Druss BG, Rosenheck RA. Mental disorders and access to medical care in the United States. Am J Psychiatry. 1998;155(12):1775-1777.
5. Druss BG, Bradford WD, Rosenheck RA, et al. Quality of medical care and excess mortality in older patients with mental disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001;58(6):565-572.
6. Druss BG, Bradford DW, Rosenheck RA, et al. Mental disorders and use of cardiovascular procedures after myocardial infarction. JAMA. 2000;283(4):506-511.
7. Nasrallah HA. Transformative advances are unfolding in psychiatry. Current Psychiatry. 2019;18(9):10-12.
8. Balasuriya L, Quinton JK, Canavan ME, et al. The association between history of depression and access to care among Medicare beneficiaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. J Gen Intern Med. 2021;36(12):3778-3785.
9. Zaheer J, Olfson M, Mallia E, et al. Predictors of suicide at time of diagnosis in schizophrenia spectrum disorder: a 20-year total population study in Ontario, Canada. Schizophr Res. 2020;222:382-388.
10. Brohan E, Thornicroft G, Rüsch N, et al. Measuring discrimination experienced by people with a mental illness: replication of the short-form DISCUS in six world regions. Psychol Med. 2022:1-11. doi:10.1017/S0033291722000630
11. Fink P. The enigma of stigma and its relation to psychiatric education. Psychiatric Annals. 1983;13(9):669-690.
12. Szasz T. The Myth of Mental Illness. Harper Collins; 1960.

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Having witnessed the devastating impact of stigma on patients with mental illness throughout my psychiatric career, I am fed up and disgusted with this malevolent scourge.

I regard the stigma that engulfs neuropsychiatric disorders as a malignancy that mutilates patients’ souls and hastens their mortality.

Stigma is hate speech

How would you feel if you had a serious medical illness, a disabling brain disorder such as schizophrenia, depression, or anxiety, and people refer to you with pejorative and insulting terms such as crazy, deranged, lunatic, unhinged, nutty, insane, wacky, berserk, cuckoo, bonkers, flaky, screwball, or unglued? This is hate speech generated by stigma against people with mental illness. Individuals with heart disease, cancer, or diabetes never get called such disgraceful and stigmatizing terms that shame, stain, besmirch, and scar them, which happens daily to persons with psychiatric brain disorders.

The damage and harm of the discriminatory stigma on our patients is multifaceted. It is painful, detrimental, pernicious, and deleterious. It is corrosive to their spirits, crippling to their self-image, and subversive to their self-confidence. Hate speech is not simply words, but a menacing weapon that assaults the core humanity of medically ill psychiatric patients.

Although hate speech is punishable by law, there are rarely any legal actions against those who hurl hate speech at psychiatric patients every day. Society has institutionalized the stigma of mental illness and takes it in stride instead of recognizing it as an illegal, harmful act.

Long before the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, 43% of the population had been shown to experience a diagnosable psychiatric disorder over the course of their life.1 Thus, tens of millions of people are burdened by stigma and the hate speech associated with it. This is directly related to massive ignorance about mental illness being the result of a neurobiological condition due to either genetic or intrauterine adverse events that disrupt brain development. Delusions and hallucinations are symptoms of a malfunctioning brain, depression is not a sign of personal weakness, anxiety is the most prevalent mental disorder in the world, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is not odd behavior but the result of dysfunction of neural circuits. Correcting public misperceptions about psychiatric brain disorders can mitigate stigma, but it has yet to happen.

Stigma is a hate crime

Stigma can accelerate physical death and premature mortality. Many studies have confirmed that persons with schizophrenia do not receive basic primary care treatments for the life-shortening medical conditions that often afflict them, such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.2 Stigma is responsible for a significant disparity of medical3-5 and intensive care6 among individuals with mental illness compared to the general population. It’s no wonder most psychiatric disorders are associated with accelerated mortality.7 A recent study during the pandemic by Balasuriya et al8 reported that patients with depression had poor access to care. Stigma interferes with or delays necessary medical care, leading to clinical deterioration and unnecessary, preventable death. Stigma shortens life and is a hate crime.

Continue to: The extremely high suicide rates...

 

 

The extremely high suicide rates among individuals with serious mental illness, who live under the oppressiveness of stigma, is another example of how stigma is a hate crime that can cause patients with psychiatric disorders to give up and end their lives. Zaheer et al9 found that young patients with schizophrenia had an astronomical suicide rate compared to the general population (1 in 52 in individuals with schizophrenia, compared to 12 in 100,000 in the general population, roughly a 200-fold increase!). This is clearly a consequence of stigma and discrimination,10 which leads to demoralization, shame, loneliness, distress, and hopelessness. Stigma can be fatal, and that makes it a hate crime.

Stigma also limits vocational opportunities for individuals with mental illness. They are either not hired, or quickly fired. Even highly educated professionals such as physicians, nurses, lawyers, or teachers can lose their jobs if they divulge a history of a psychiatric disorder or alcohol or substance abuse, regardless of whether they are receiving treatment and are medically in remission. Even highly qualified politicians have been deemed “ineligible” for higher office if they disclose a history of psychiatric treatment. Stigma is loaded with outrageous discrimination that deprives our patients of “the pursuit of happiness,” a fundamental constitutional right.

Stigma surrounding the mental health professions

Stigma also engulfs mental health professionals, simply because they deal with psychiatric patients every day. In a classic article titled “The Enigma of Stigma,”11 Dr. Paul Fink, past president of the American Psychiatric Association (1988-1989), described how psychiatrists are perceived as “different” from other physicians by the public and by the media. He said psychiatrists are tarred by the same brush as their patients as “undesirables” in society. And movies such as Psycho and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reinforce the stigma against both psychiatric patients and the psychiatrists and nurses who treat them. The health care system that carves out “behavioral health” from the umbrella of “medical care” further accentuates the stigma by portraying the “separateness” of psychiatry, a genuine medical specialty, from its fellow medical disciplines. This becomes fodder for the antipsychiatry movement at every turn and can even lead to questioning the existence of mental illness, as Thomas Szasz12 did by declaring that mental illness is a myth and describing psychiatry as “the science of lies.” No other medical specialty endures abuse and insults like psychiatry, and that’s a direct result of stigma.

Extinguishing stigma is a societal imperative

So what can be done to squelch stigma and defeat it once and for all, so that psychiatric patients can be treated with dignity and compassion, like people with cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, or brain tumors? The pandemic, terrible as it has been for the entire world, did have the silver lining of raising awareness about the ubiquity of psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, across all ages, genders, educational and religious backgrounds, and socioeconomic classes. But there should also be a robust legal battle against the damaging effects of stigma. There are laws to sanction and penalize hate speech and hate crimes that must be implemented when stigma is documented. There are also parity laws, but they have no teeth and have not ameliorated the insurance discrepancies and economic burden of psychiatric disorders. A bold step would be to reclassify serious psychiatric brain disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, OCD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, generalized anxiety disorder/panic attacks, and borderline personality disorder) as neurologic disorders, which would automatically give patients with these disorders broad access to medical care, which happened when autism was reclassified as a neurologic disorder. Finally, a much more intensive public education must be disseminated about the neurobiological etiologies, brain structure, and function in psychiatric disorders, and the psychiatric symptoms associated with all neurologic disorders. Regrettably, empathy can be difficult to teach.

Stigma is hate speech and a hate crime. It must be permanently eliminated by effective laws and by erasing the widespread ignorance about the medical and neurologic roots of mental disorders, and by emphasizing the fact that they are as treatable as other general medical conditions.

Having witnessed the devastating impact of stigma on patients with mental illness throughout my psychiatric career, I am fed up and disgusted with this malevolent scourge.

I regard the stigma that engulfs neuropsychiatric disorders as a malignancy that mutilates patients’ souls and hastens their mortality.

Stigma is hate speech

How would you feel if you had a serious medical illness, a disabling brain disorder such as schizophrenia, depression, or anxiety, and people refer to you with pejorative and insulting terms such as crazy, deranged, lunatic, unhinged, nutty, insane, wacky, berserk, cuckoo, bonkers, flaky, screwball, or unglued? This is hate speech generated by stigma against people with mental illness. Individuals with heart disease, cancer, or diabetes never get called such disgraceful and stigmatizing terms that shame, stain, besmirch, and scar them, which happens daily to persons with psychiatric brain disorders.

The damage and harm of the discriminatory stigma on our patients is multifaceted. It is painful, detrimental, pernicious, and deleterious. It is corrosive to their spirits, crippling to their self-image, and subversive to their self-confidence. Hate speech is not simply words, but a menacing weapon that assaults the core humanity of medically ill psychiatric patients.

Although hate speech is punishable by law, there are rarely any legal actions against those who hurl hate speech at psychiatric patients every day. Society has institutionalized the stigma of mental illness and takes it in stride instead of recognizing it as an illegal, harmful act.

Long before the stresses of the COVID-19 pandemic, 43% of the population had been shown to experience a diagnosable psychiatric disorder over the course of their life.1 Thus, tens of millions of people are burdened by stigma and the hate speech associated with it. This is directly related to massive ignorance about mental illness being the result of a neurobiological condition due to either genetic or intrauterine adverse events that disrupt brain development. Delusions and hallucinations are symptoms of a malfunctioning brain, depression is not a sign of personal weakness, anxiety is the most prevalent mental disorder in the world, and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is not odd behavior but the result of dysfunction of neural circuits. Correcting public misperceptions about psychiatric brain disorders can mitigate stigma, but it has yet to happen.

Stigma is a hate crime

Stigma can accelerate physical death and premature mortality. Many studies have confirmed that persons with schizophrenia do not receive basic primary care treatments for the life-shortening medical conditions that often afflict them, such as diabetes, dyslipidemia, and hypertension.2 Stigma is responsible for a significant disparity of medical3-5 and intensive care6 among individuals with mental illness compared to the general population. It’s no wonder most psychiatric disorders are associated with accelerated mortality.7 A recent study during the pandemic by Balasuriya et al8 reported that patients with depression had poor access to care. Stigma interferes with or delays necessary medical care, leading to clinical deterioration and unnecessary, preventable death. Stigma shortens life and is a hate crime.

Continue to: The extremely high suicide rates...

 

 

The extremely high suicide rates among individuals with serious mental illness, who live under the oppressiveness of stigma, is another example of how stigma is a hate crime that can cause patients with psychiatric disorders to give up and end their lives. Zaheer et al9 found that young patients with schizophrenia had an astronomical suicide rate compared to the general population (1 in 52 in individuals with schizophrenia, compared to 12 in 100,000 in the general population, roughly a 200-fold increase!). This is clearly a consequence of stigma and discrimination,10 which leads to demoralization, shame, loneliness, distress, and hopelessness. Stigma can be fatal, and that makes it a hate crime.

Stigma also limits vocational opportunities for individuals with mental illness. They are either not hired, or quickly fired. Even highly educated professionals such as physicians, nurses, lawyers, or teachers can lose their jobs if they divulge a history of a psychiatric disorder or alcohol or substance abuse, regardless of whether they are receiving treatment and are medically in remission. Even highly qualified politicians have been deemed “ineligible” for higher office if they disclose a history of psychiatric treatment. Stigma is loaded with outrageous discrimination that deprives our patients of “the pursuit of happiness,” a fundamental constitutional right.

Stigma surrounding the mental health professions

Stigma also engulfs mental health professionals, simply because they deal with psychiatric patients every day. In a classic article titled “The Enigma of Stigma,”11 Dr. Paul Fink, past president of the American Psychiatric Association (1988-1989), described how psychiatrists are perceived as “different” from other physicians by the public and by the media. He said psychiatrists are tarred by the same brush as their patients as “undesirables” in society. And movies such as Psycho and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest reinforce the stigma against both psychiatric patients and the psychiatrists and nurses who treat them. The health care system that carves out “behavioral health” from the umbrella of “medical care” further accentuates the stigma by portraying the “separateness” of psychiatry, a genuine medical specialty, from its fellow medical disciplines. This becomes fodder for the antipsychiatry movement at every turn and can even lead to questioning the existence of mental illness, as Thomas Szasz12 did by declaring that mental illness is a myth and describing psychiatry as “the science of lies.” No other medical specialty endures abuse and insults like psychiatry, and that’s a direct result of stigma.

Extinguishing stigma is a societal imperative

So what can be done to squelch stigma and defeat it once and for all, so that psychiatric patients can be treated with dignity and compassion, like people with cancer, heart attacks, diabetes, or brain tumors? The pandemic, terrible as it has been for the entire world, did have the silver lining of raising awareness about the ubiquity of psychiatric symptoms, such as anxiety and depression, across all ages, genders, educational and religious backgrounds, and socioeconomic classes. But there should also be a robust legal battle against the damaging effects of stigma. There are laws to sanction and penalize hate speech and hate crimes that must be implemented when stigma is documented. There are also parity laws, but they have no teeth and have not ameliorated the insurance discrepancies and economic burden of psychiatric disorders. A bold step would be to reclassify serious psychiatric brain disorders (schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depressive disorder, OCD, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, generalized anxiety disorder/panic attacks, and borderline personality disorder) as neurologic disorders, which would automatically give patients with these disorders broad access to medical care, which happened when autism was reclassified as a neurologic disorder. Finally, a much more intensive public education must be disseminated about the neurobiological etiologies, brain structure, and function in psychiatric disorders, and the psychiatric symptoms associated with all neurologic disorders. Regrettably, empathy can be difficult to teach.

Stigma is hate speech and a hate crime. It must be permanently eliminated by effective laws and by erasing the widespread ignorance about the medical and neurologic roots of mental disorders, and by emphasizing the fact that they are as treatable as other general medical conditions.

References

1. Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O, et al. Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62(6):593-602.
2. Nasrallah HA, Meyer JM, Goff DC, et al. Low rates of treatment for hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes in schizophrenia: data from the CATIE schizophrenia trial sample at baseline. Schizophr Res. 2006;86(1-3):15-22.
3. Druss BG, Rosenheck RA. Use of medical services by veterans with mental disorders. Psychosomatics. 1997;38(5):451-458.
4. Druss BG, Rosenheck RA. Mental disorders and access to medical care in the United States. Am J Psychiatry. 1998;155(12):1775-1777.
5. Druss BG, Bradford WD, Rosenheck RA, et al. Quality of medical care and excess mortality in older patients with mental disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001;58(6):565-572.
6. Druss BG, Bradford DW, Rosenheck RA, et al. Mental disorders and use of cardiovascular procedures after myocardial infarction. JAMA. 2000;283(4):506-511.
7. Nasrallah HA. Transformative advances are unfolding in psychiatry. Current Psychiatry. 2019;18(9):10-12.
8. Balasuriya L, Quinton JK, Canavan ME, et al. The association between history of depression and access to care among Medicare beneficiaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. J Gen Intern Med. 2021;36(12):3778-3785.
9. Zaheer J, Olfson M, Mallia E, et al. Predictors of suicide at time of diagnosis in schizophrenia spectrum disorder: a 20-year total population study in Ontario, Canada. Schizophr Res. 2020;222:382-388.
10. Brohan E, Thornicroft G, Rüsch N, et al. Measuring discrimination experienced by people with a mental illness: replication of the short-form DISCUS in six world regions. Psychol Med. 2022:1-11. doi:10.1017/S0033291722000630
11. Fink P. The enigma of stigma and its relation to psychiatric education. Psychiatric Annals. 1983;13(9):669-690.
12. Szasz T. The Myth of Mental Illness. Harper Collins; 1960.

References

1. Kessler RC, Berglund P, Demler O, et al. Lifetime prevalence and age-of-onset distributions of DSM-IV disorders in the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2005;62(6):593-602.
2. Nasrallah HA, Meyer JM, Goff DC, et al. Low rates of treatment for hypertension, dyslipidemia and diabetes in schizophrenia: data from the CATIE schizophrenia trial sample at baseline. Schizophr Res. 2006;86(1-3):15-22.
3. Druss BG, Rosenheck RA. Use of medical services by veterans with mental disorders. Psychosomatics. 1997;38(5):451-458.
4. Druss BG, Rosenheck RA. Mental disorders and access to medical care in the United States. Am J Psychiatry. 1998;155(12):1775-1777.
5. Druss BG, Bradford WD, Rosenheck RA, et al. Quality of medical care and excess mortality in older patients with mental disorders. Arch Gen Psychiatry. 2001;58(6):565-572.
6. Druss BG, Bradford DW, Rosenheck RA, et al. Mental disorders and use of cardiovascular procedures after myocardial infarction. JAMA. 2000;283(4):506-511.
7. Nasrallah HA. Transformative advances are unfolding in psychiatry. Current Psychiatry. 2019;18(9):10-12.
8. Balasuriya L, Quinton JK, Canavan ME, et al. The association between history of depression and access to care among Medicare beneficiaries during the COVID-19 pandemic. J Gen Intern Med. 2021;36(12):3778-3785.
9. Zaheer J, Olfson M, Mallia E, et al. Predictors of suicide at time of diagnosis in schizophrenia spectrum disorder: a 20-year total population study in Ontario, Canada. Schizophr Res. 2020;222:382-388.
10. Brohan E, Thornicroft G, Rüsch N, et al. Measuring discrimination experienced by people with a mental illness: replication of the short-form DISCUS in six world regions. Psychol Med. 2022:1-11. doi:10.1017/S0033291722000630
11. Fink P. The enigma of stigma and its relation to psychiatric education. Psychiatric Annals. 1983;13(9):669-690.
12. Szasz T. The Myth of Mental Illness. Harper Collins; 1960.

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