Stigma and Discrimination in schizophrenia Essay

Stigma and Discrimination in schizophrenia - Essay Example Discrimination may be defined as the action or treatment based on stigma and directed towards the Stigmatized (Bunding, 1996). Stigma and discrimination are highly associated with the Schizophrenia as it is a psychiatric condition that describes a mental disorder characterized by deviation in the expression of truth and / or by significant social or occupational dysfunction. Stigma and discrimination resulted by schizophrenia is mainly due to unawareness among the people about the disease. Some investigators found that the stigma operated by schizophrenia may result in deviated behaviour and violence which is very dangerous (Link et al., 1992; farrington, 1994; Link &Stueve, 1995; Appelbaum et al., 2000). Schizophrenia is reported to afflict 1% of the worlds population (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 1991), where as schizotypal personality disorder afflicts 2–3%. The stigma and discrimination caused by schizophrenia was confirmed by several research workers (Poulton et al, 2000; Cannon et al, 2002). Earlier studies and reviews of worldwide-published research mainly compared the incidences of the stigma and discrimination due to illness in urban and rural geographical regions (Haroutunian et al., 2006, Paz et al, 2006 and Skosnik et al., 2006). However the past studies didn’t focus much on multifaceted stigmatization of schiz ophrenia and hence the present investigation has been performed to analyse the stigma and discrimination associated with schizophrenia in more integrated manner. This was planned to answer the following questions. The sample size of the population (N) is 300. The family members of the schizophrenics residing in Mumbai, India were interviewed on nature and causes of stigma, most common forms of stigma, common source, removal probability, consequences, common management strategies, method of information about