Estimates indicate that as many as 1 in 4 Americans will experience a mental health problem or will misuse alcohol or drugs in their lifetimes. These disorders are among the most highly stigmatized health conditions in the United States, and they remain barriers to full participation in society in areas as basic as education, housing, and employment. Improving the lives of people with mental health and substance abuse disorders has been a priority in the United States for more than 50 years. The Community Mental Health Act of 1963 is considered a major turning point in America's efforts to improve behavioral healthcare. It ushered in an era of optimism and hope and laid the groundwork for the consumer movement and new models of recovery. The consumer movement gave voice to people with mental and substance use disorders and brought their perspectives and experience into national discussions about mental health. However over the same 50-year period, positive change in American public attitudes and beliefs about mental and substance use disorders has lagged behind these advances. Stigma is a complex social phenomenon based on a relationship between an attribute and a stereotype that assigns undesirable labels, qualities, and behaviors to a person with that attribute. Labeled individuals are then socially devalued, which leads to inequality and discrimination. This report contributes to national efforts to understand and change attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that can lead to stigma and discrimination. Changing stigma in a lasting way will require coordinated efforts, which are based on the best possible evidence, supported at the national level with multiyear funding, and planned and implemented by an effective coalition of representative stakeholders. Ending Discrimination Against People with Mental and Substance Use Disorders: The Evidence for Stigma Change explores stigma and discrimination faced by individuals with mental or substance use disorders and recommends effective strategies for reducing stigma and encouraging people to seek treatment and other supportive services. It offers a set of conclusions and recommendations about successful stigma change strategies and the research needed to inform and evaluate these efforts in the United States.

From the author of The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life, Stigma is analyzes a person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to people whom society calls “normal.” Stigma is an illuminating excursion into the situation of persons who are unable to conform to standards that society calls normal. Disqualified from full social acceptance, they are stigmatized individuals. Physically deformed people, ex-mental patients, drug addicts, prostitutes, or those ostracized for other reasons must constantly strive to adjust to their precarious social identities. Their image of themselves must daily confront and be affronted by the image which others reflect back to them. Drawing extensively on autobiographies and case studies, sociologist Erving Goffman analyzes the stigmatized person’s feelings about himself and his relationship to “normals” He explores the variety of strategies stigmatized individuals employ to deal with the rejection of others, and the complex sorts of information about themselves they project. In Stigma the interplay of alternatives the stigmatized individual must face every day is brilliantly examined by one of America’s leading social analysts.

America's incarceration rate was roughly constant from 1925 to 1973, with an average of 110 people behind bars for every 100,000 residents. By 2013, however, the rate of incarceration in state and federal prisons had increased sevenfold to 716. Compared with 102 for Canada, 132 for England and Wales, 85 for France, and a paltry 48 in Japan, the United States is the worlds' most aggressive jailer. When one factors in those on parole or probation, the American correctional system is in control of more than 7.3 million Americans, or one in every 31 U.S. adults. This means that 6.7 million adult men and women -- about 3.1 percent of the total U.S. adult population -- are now very non-voluntary members of America's "correctional community." Some key questions that need to be addressed are: "What are we doing with those 7.3 million Americans? How are they being treated while they are incarcerated? How can we best prepare them to return to their communities?" More than 650,000 offenders are released back into our communities every year; however, 70% are rearrested within three years of their release. Serving the Stigmatized is the first book of its kind that explores best practices when dealing with a specific prison population while under some form of institutional control. If the established goal of a correctional facility is to "rehabilitate," then it is imperative that the rehabilitation is effective and does not simply serve as a political buzz word. The timing of releasing this book coincides with a real movement in the United States, supported by both conservative and liberal advocates and foundations, to decrease the size of the prison population by returning more offenders to their communities. The text examines 14 specific populations and how to effectively treat them in order to better serve them and our communities.

The volume demonstrates that stigma is a normal - albeit undesirable - consequence of people's limited cognitive resources, and of the social information and experiences to which they are exposed. Incorporated are the perspectives of both the perceiver and the target; the relevance of personal and collective identities; and the interplay of affective, cognitive, and behavioral processes. Particular attention is given to how stigmatized persons make meaning of their predicaments, such as by forming alternative, positive group identities.

Stigma leads to poorer health. In The Oxford Handbook of Stigma, Discrimination, and Health, leading scholars identify stigma mechanisms that operate at multiple levels to erode the health of stigmatized individuals and, collectively, produce health disparities. This book provides unique insights concerning the link between stigma and health across various types of stigma and groups.

This book makes a highly innovative contribution to overcoming the stigma and discrimination associated with mental illness – still the heaviest burden both for those afflicted and those caring for them. The scene is set by the presentation of different fundamental perspectives on the problem of stigma and discrimination by researchers, consumers, families, and human rights experts. Current knowledge and practice used in reducing stigma are then described, with information on the programmes adopted across the world and their utility, feasibility, and effectiveness. The core of the volume comprises descriptions of new approaches and innovative programmes specifically designed to overcome stigma and discrimination. In the closing part of the book, the editors – all respected experts in the field – summarize some of the most important evidence- and experience-based recommendations for future action to successfully rewrite the long and burdensome ‘story’ of mental illness stigma and discrimination.

This book explores the stigma of addiction and discusses ways to improve negative attitudes for better health outcomes. Written by experts in the field of addiction, the text takes a reader-friendly approach to the essentials of addiction stigma across settings and demographics. The authors reveal the challenges patients face in the spaces that should be the safest, including the home, the workplace, the justice system, and even the clinical community. The text aims to deliver tools to professionals who work with individuals with substance use disorders and lay persons seeking to combat stigma and promote recovery. The Stigma of Addiction is an excellent resource for psychiatrists, addiction medicine specialists, students across specialties, researchers, public health officials, and individuals with substance use disorders and their families.

Dr. Morehead argues that it is time for a full-throated defense of mental health treatment, and that it falls to everyone, from medical and mental health professionals to the general public, to advocate on its behalf. He cogently lays out the science behind mental illness and mental health care, candidly discussing both what is known and what re

This is the definitive textbook on global mental health, an emerging priority discipline within global health, which places priority on improving mental health and achieving equity in mental health for all people worldwide.

Written-Off tells the story of how mental health stigma comes to have a profound impact on the lives of people diagnosed with mental illnesses. It reviews theory, research, and history - illustrated with a multitude of personal stories - in four major areas. These areas are: the prevalence and predictors of negative attitudes and behaviors toward mental illness, the impact of community attitudes and behaviors on the self-perceptions of people diagnosed with mental illness, the impact of self-perceptions on the community participation of people diagnosed with mental illness, and how to change self-perceptions through a variety of approaches.