Mental Health Information
The label mental illness is highly stigmatising. It encourages people to think of 'the mentally ill' as an entirely separate category from 'people like us', rather than as ordinary people who have, for whatever reason, more severe emotional difficulties to cope with. Popular misconceptions, fuelled by the media, depict mentally ill people as violent and dangerous. These stereotypes are contradicted by ordinary people's experiences of mental health problems affecting themselves, their family members, friends or work colleagues.