How Healthcare Professionals Can Break Down Mental Health Stigmas
Although mental healthcare challenges have become even more evident and widespread, mental health stigmas remain a barrier to accessing care.
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- As the coronavirus pandemic persists into 2021 and the mental health crisis swells, healthcare stakeholders can take an active role in helping to reduce mental health stigmas.
Lana Seiler, primary therapist at All Points North Lodge, told Healthcare Strategies that nearly four in ten Americans are not comfortable discussing their own mental health, despite the fact that mental health challenges are increasing nationwide.
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Before the coronavirus pandemic began, the mental health crisis was growing. From 2014 through 2018, major depression rose 43 percent among Millennials and psychotic disorders rose 26 percent in the same population.
Fears related to the coronavirus pandemic and necessary social isolation have only strengthened the mental health epidemic, Seiler explained.
And patients are not the only ones suffering from the mental health impacts of the pandemic.
Between June and September of 2020, three-quarters of providers said that they were feeling overwhelmed and 86 percent of providers reported experiencing anxiety, according to a Mental Health America survey. Nearly four in ten participants said that they did not have enough emotional support.
Despite the widespread need for mental health support, stigmas against mental healthcare remain pervasive.
According to a recent survey conducted by All Points North Lodge, 57.8 percent of Americans do not pursue mental health treatment because they fear others will judge them for doing so.
But Seiler said that healthcare professionals and the general public can take steps to reduce that barrier.
Abandoning language that identifies the patient with their pathology—for example, using the phrase “a person with schizophrenia” as opposed to “a schizophrenic”—can go a long way in showing support for a patient’s journey to wellness.
Additionally, healthcare providers and the general public can work towards personalizing mental health challenges.
“We have a tendency as a society to gloss over or not look square in the face the losses that we experienced,” Seiler explained. “We try to remove ourselves from them or quickly get up and dust ourselves off and say, ‘We're fine.’ But I encourage people to move through this stuff a little more mindfully.”
By creating a culture of openness and honesty around mental healthcare challenges, providers and the public can slowly break down barriers to accessing mental healthcare resources.
