Stigma & Discrimination of Mental Health (Depression, Bipolar, Cyclothymia)

Hi, my name is Joseph from Mental Health Europe and welcome to the Beyond the Label series. You may have heard of such things as bipolar disorder, cyclothymia or affective personality disorder, but have you ever considered that those with lived experience of these things may have experienced stigma or even discrimination in modern society? In this episode I'll be discussing exactly that with an expert, Guadalupe Morales of Mundo Bipolar. My name is Guadalupe Morales. I was born in Mexico. I have lived in several countries in Latin America and since I was 16 I'm living in Spain and I'm Spanish. I'm a journalist. I was fired from my job when my boss found out that I have a psychiatric diagnosis, bipolar disorder. That was terrible for me and my life changed dramatically, drastically. So after that I started to be involved in Mental Health Europe, INUS and other organizations and 20 years have passed by. We created Fundación Mundo Bipolar in Spain and well, we fight against stigma and discrimination, not just stigma. And I'm very glad to be here with you. It's very nice to have you. We'll jump straight in. So my first question would be how do stigma and discrimination manifest in everyday life? Well, I would say that's in almost every step because society, even our own families, are not able to manage the situation and you have to think that historically people with persons with mental health problems have been marginalized, even killed by the Nazis, and we have never had any kind of rights, which were just considered as demons and we have to be exorcised by the priests and things like that. So this is in everybody's mind in a way. They consider people with mental health problems or psychosocial disabilities very dangerous and violent and things like that, which is not true. We are more susceptible of suffering violence than to make anything violent to others. So in every step things are changing a little bit, little by little, because of the COVID. Mental health is now an issue. It's all over. But we have to ask ourselves if the people and their organizations with lived experience are really involved in a meaningful way in every aspect. That nothing about us without us things are improving, but not as much as they should. And stigma is just terrible. Stigma itself, well, we in the Lancet Commission to Ending Stigma and Discrimination, we made a survey in 2019, and one of the conclusions was that 80% of people with a psychiatric diagnosis feel and thought that stigma and discrimination was worse than the mental health problem itself. So in a way to fight stigma, we need strong groups of people fighting for them, the way the Afro-American people fought during the civil rights in the 1960s, or maybe even the suffragettes at the beginning of the past century, or the upper head in South Africa who obtained their right to vote in 1994. But that is, in my view, a very slow process until the society finds out that we are not dangerous, and we are not going to do any harm to them. It's going to take a lot of time. Anyway, we have to stop to continue fighting for it. How do these social perceptions affect people's opportunities, such as life or work? And you've especially sort of mentioned stigma and discrimination specifically. Well, let me try to make a difference between stigma and discrimination. Both create a separation from certain people or certain collectives to others. In that sense, they are the same. But discrimination, especially if it's based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, or the UN Convention for the Rights of People with Disabilities, is against those principles, rights. It's a violation. Now, that's one step. After that, there must be bodies that fight against those kinds of discrimination, which there are none, almost none, all over. Well, we have the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948, which is not obliged. All those countries that signed it are not obliged to implement it. But we do have the UNCRPD, as I mentioned. And all those countries, I believe it's about 187, not in the United States, are obliged to implement it in their laws in their own countries. So it is a long, long journey. But the main thing is, and the good news is that we have good articles contained in the CRPD. The first step should be, could be, but it's not really, to make it, create awareness about the UNCRPD. And in my view, at least what we try to do is that people with psychosocial disabilities, that's the way the UN Convention approved our name, are aware of their rights and fight for their rights and try to make them happen. So, in my opinion, from my experience, that is the path to have some freedom and being, and to be citizens like anybody else. Till then, well, I feel that there are a lot of things going around, good things, but still, my very first step will be the meaningful involvement of persons with psychosocial disabilities and their organizations at every level. It is a cultural change. Difficult because we have never had voice nor power and, well, but we are there. We are very few people fighting. That's another thing. We need young people to continue what we have been doing. We try to have young people through our trainings and we are on our way. At least it is, there's a path, I believe. That sounds really positive to me, is that there is some hope in the way forward. I was going to ask and see what are some positive examples of changes you've seen, but I think you've already answered that one, unless you have any other examples. Yes, I have wonderful examples. For example, I've been collaborating with the World Psychiatric Association for four or five years in a working group on alternatives to coercion with people, with psychiatrists of all over the world, and in the last two years WHO was involved too. So there, for the first time in my career, I found a lot of time to discuss, a lot of respect, good manners. You think, oh, good manners are not so important. Yes, they are. Especially when you confront points of view until you reach the consensus. So in that working group, we had a number of articles, scientific articles, and we created a training, a course for all the world congresses since 2020. And for me, it was very important to have a global consultation on coercion and about coercion, basically. And there was a report, and now we're writing the article. And this is the way we have to go forward. This is the only way. We cannot, I feel that we need, we all need each other. It's not just saying that because we need professionals, we need politicians, we need organizations like Mental Health Europe, etc. And then finally, would you have any last messages to anyone that has been experiencing discrimination? Well, I was going to say almost a joke, because I always feel that we have to have infinite patience. And at the same time, get to know which are your rights and fight for your rights. That's the only way that things are going to change. We have to be the agents of change. And I've suffered a lot of stigma, discrimination, and little by little, well, I lost my job because of a diagnosis. But little by little, I'm feeling a lot, much more respect from everybody that I'm in touch, especially when I wrote a book about stigma and discrimination. Well, it was a chapter that changed even in my own family. They weren't aware of a lot of things. So we have to speak loud and with calm. That sounds great. Thank you so much, Lupe, for your time. This is a great conversation, and we'll speak soon. Thank you, Joseph. It's a pleasure. Bye. We hope you found that interview interesting. If you'd like to know more about the work we do, you can find us on our website www.mentalhealtheurope.org, or you can check out the other videos in the Beyond the Label series on our playlist. Consider leaving us a like or even a comment.