preview

Sociology And Mental Illness

Better Essays

Sara Sims Sociology of Health and Health Care Research Paper April 26, 2015 Sociology and the Stigmatization of Mental Illness Although it isn’t something that people in society thinks about daily, mental illness is stigmatized all the time. People may think that they don’t think badly about those with mental illness, but those people may be stigmatizing mental illness more than they realize. Recently, there has been a home put into a neighborhood of mine for people with mental illness. Since the neighborhood found out about this home, there were voiced concerns, many with inaccurate information about those with mental illness. Many of the concerns were that these people would would be dangerous, or loud, or that it would make the neighborhood look bad having “crazy people” living on the block. Another example is a time I was in Drum Corps. Drum Corps is like professional marching band, and my corps went to church every Sunday. One particular Sunday, we went to a beautiful church in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. As the service went on, people in my corps noticed a man sitting near us who was talking, rather loudly, to himself about God. It was almost as if he felt he was talking to God. Many of the people around me were making fun of the man, and speaking bad about him, not only during the church service, but throughout the day. They were stigmatizing his mental illness. People fear and shun what they do not know, and therefore stigmatize. What is mental illness

Get Access