In my psychiatric work, I find one of the most urgent, painful and underemphasized issues is the stigmatization my patients and their families face and the impact that has on their quality of life and stability. This paper from BioMedNet [requires free registration] is a nice discussion of the issues and the impact of new genetic paradigms in understanding mental illness. Genetic bases of mental illness – a cure for stigma?

An increased emphasis on biological causes of mental illness has been viewed as having the potential to significantly reduce stigma. From this perspective, the current genetics revolution can be seen as a source of hope. However, some have argued that biological attributions could increase stigma, for example by making the ill person seem ‘defective’ or ‘physically distinct’ – ‘almost a different species’. In this paper, I use a multicomponent conceptualization of stigma as a guide in forming hypotheses about the likely impact of genetic attributions on the stigma of mental illness.

As recently emphasized by the US Surgeon General, people with mental illnesses suffer not only from their disorders, but also from the stigma and discrimination that accompany them. Mental illness is associated in the public mind with an astoundingly broad range of negative attributes – for example, being dangerous, dirty, cold, worthless, bad, weak and ignorant. The consequences of these stereotypes range from direct and obvious ones, such as discrimination in employment and housing, to informal social ostracization and more subtle expressions, such as television programs that portray people with mental illness as being inadequate, unlikable and dangerous. Family members also suffer from stigma, through blame for causing the illness, having their own mental health status questioned, rejection by friends and other relatives, and so on.