The Mark of Madness: Stigma, Serious Mental Illnesses, and Social Work

Stigma is a major barrier to recovery for individuals with mental illnesses. It interferes with community living and attainment of resources and goals and damages self-esteem and self-efficacy. Given that social workers provide much of the mental health care to individuals with mental illnesses, and that actions to reduce stigma support the social justice mission of social work, addressing stigma should be a focus of social work interventions. The goals of this paper are to explore stigma theory in general and for individuals with serious mental illnesses, discuss the implications of this stigma analysis for social work, and make recommendations for action in both practice and research. (C) 2005 by The Haworth Press, Inc. All rights reserved.