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Ending Stigma Around Mental Illness

Mackenzie Beckett

Period 3/English 12 ERWC

Oct. 13th, 2016

Table of Contents

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Table of Contents.Page #1

I. Part One: Description.......................................Page #2-3

II. Part Two: Research.......................................Page #4

III. Part Three: Reflection.......................................Page #6-7

IV. Part Four: Works Cited.......................................Page #8

V. Part Five: Annotated Bibliography.......................................Page #9

Project Description
Being someone who has to deal with a mental disorder every day, I have to deal with the
trials and tribulations that come with it. These trials and tribulations include the symptoms of
said disorders, the worry that if anyone finds out youre struggling with what youre struggling

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with that no one wont like you anymore, and the biggest one: the stigmatization of these
disorders. I was diagnosed with Bipolar I disorder and Generalized Anxiety Disorder, and
Bipolar is one of the most stigmatized disorders youll get. Some of the other more stigmatized
disorders in society are schizophrenia, dissociative identity disorder, and borderline personality
disorder. As my senior project I plan on creating a book as a way to communicate how to get rid
of the stigmatization as well as communicate to others who dont have to deal with mental illness
what it feels like and what it means to have a mental illness with words and illustrations to go
with them.
I plan on focusing on all of the mental disorders I possibly can cover. Some of disorders
that I hope to be writing about are histrionic personality disorder, bipolar disorder, narcissistic
personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, etc. I think this project will be a pretty huge
challenge because I only have my own viewpoint. Im hoping that since I only have my own
viewpoint I can get a fair amount of research done to learn more unbiased information about
these topics. I think I will also learn a lot from this project because even though I suffer from a
couple disorders, I still know next to nothing about how they work and Im still trying to find out
how to control them instead of letting them control me.
As for materials used for this project, since it will be a book with illustrations, I will use
all sorts of art materials, such as watercolor, ink pens, and pencil crayons. I will be binding the
book myself or having someone else bind the book. The writings will go into deep detail as to
how to end the stigmatization of mental disorders as well as explaining what it means to have
one to those who are fortunate enough to have to not deal with that experience. It will also go
well into detail about how we as humans with mental illnesses personally feel about stigmatism
and discrimination based on our illnesses.

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Research
Throughout the ages, society has treated people with mental illness as psychos and
people who are dangerous. Nobody really gave this much thought, so people thought this way up
until around the 1940s. Though, even then they didnt think of us as equals and to this day people
still think more lowly of us and pity us more than anything. My goal is to figure out if mental
illness affects how we do art, if art can affect it, and in what ways. Not only this, but if the
stigmatization around mental illness adds anything or takes away from people with mental illness
who do art.

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After doing extensive research, I have learned many facts and statistics pertaining to the
topic of mental illness and the stigmas that people who suffer from them have to face, while also
researching topics pertaining to my point of view and others opinions on these matters. On the
TV show X-Men, a recurring line is People fear what they dont understand. Thats part of the
problemmost of our education about mental illness comes from the media, not from doctors.
As a result, perception is warped. (Oberg) This article uses popular pop culture terms to help
make people better understand what exactly is the problem and why people have such a hard
time understanding mental illness.
A mental illness is a condition that affects a person's thinking, feeling or mood. Such
conditions may affect someone's ability to relate to others and function each day. Each person
will have different experiences, even people with the same diagnosis. Recovery, including
meaningful roles in social life, school and work, is possible, especially when you start treatment
early and play a strong role in your own recovery process (NAMI) This article lists all the
different types of disorders as well as the symptoms of them and how you should go about being
properly supportive of someone with that disorder.
As stated by Scott Kaufman, Mental illness is neither necessary nor sufficient
for creativity.
In conclusion, Ive found that not only does mental illness have an effect on

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Reflection
I think my senior project is going to end up really well, though I do expect it to be extremely
challenging. The biggest strengths are that this project has lots of personal meaning to me, as
someone who knows some of what people go through when it comes to mental disorders. I think
my book will help people who dont suffer from any mental illnesses better understand the
hardships those who do go through on an everyday basis and maybe teach them how to treat
them a little kinder. I think the biggest problems I will encounter is drawing the illustrations to
kind of personify the disorders or make them seem a little simpler. I plan to make rough drafts of
my illustrations ahead of time so that I can figure out how Im going to lay the book out ahead of
time. I definitely feel that this is a big step up and I hope to not only make this book make adults
think, but also kids my age, because they tend to use words pertaining to disorders offensively
without knowing it. Thats one thing I find to be extremely important to me.

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Making kids my age or even younger aware that using certain words pertaining to mental
illness are not okay to use to describe people in any negative situation because you never know if
there are people who suffer from mental illness and it could definitely hurt their feelings. I think
every person with a mental disorder feels very sad when certain words are aimed at people in a
negative context, such as the word psychotic, or bipolar, or crazy, or insane. These words can
really hurt. As someone who has experienced this, I can tell you that for me, hearing those words
come out of somebodys mouth in a negative context makes me extremely saddened by the lack
of education on mental illnesses and whenever those slang words for people with mental
illnesses are used it feels like a stab in my heart. For this book, I will be using different mediums
of art to display the different symptoms and sort of different aspects of the mental disorders.
Im very excited about this project and I know it is going to be extremely challenging for
me because I have never written a book or done anything that holds this much importance to me
personally. I feel like I can accomplish this, and it will take up almost all of my time besides
other schoolwork. I feel that this project will be more than worth it if I can complete it on time
and make it look really nice and neat. The biggest issue is the possibility that I could royally
screw up, which isnt extremely likely but the possibility is still there looming in your mind
when a project is this important and not only worth so much as a grade but also worth so much to
me.

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Works Cited
Oberg, Becky. "Are Some Mental Illnesses More Stigmatized Than Others? | More Than
Borderline - HealthyPlace." More Than Borderline. Healthy Place America's Mental Health
Channel, 28 Oct. 2014. Web. 20 Oct. 2016.

"Mental Health Conditions." NAMI: National Alliance on Mental Illness. NAMI, n.d. Web. 20
Oct. 2016.
Kaufman, Scott Barry. "The Real Link Between Creativity and Mental Illness."Scientific
American Blog Network. Scientific American Blog Network, 03 Oct. 2013. Web. 23 Oct. 2016.

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Annotated Bibliography
Crisp, Arthur H., Michael Gelder G., Susannah Rix, Howard Meltzer I., and Olwen Rowlands J.
Stigmatisation of people with mental illnesses. The British Journal of Psychiatry, Vol 177
(2000): Online. http://bjp.rcpsych.org/content/177/1/4.short
This article is reporting data from surveys and analysis about the stigmatism around mental
illness and the opinions of people who do not suffer from them. The aim of the report was to
determine the opinions of specifically the British population concerning people with mental
illnesses. This data was used as a base to help combat the stigma of mental illness.

Adams, Maurianne, Lee Bell Anne, and Pat Griffin. "Appendix 14C." Teaching for Diversity and
Social Justice: A Sourcebook. 2nd ed. Routledge, 1997. Online.
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/dfrankl/curr/kin385/pdf/history-of-treatment-of-thedisabled.pdf
This article is in the form of an educational journal focusing on the history of how disabled
people, like people with mental illnesses, were treated during each decade. This article focuses
on the older years and how treatment of the mentally ill are now currently treated.

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Corrigan, Patrick W., Watson, Amy C. Understanding the impact of stigma on people with
mental illness University of Chicago Center for Psychiatric Rehabilitation and Chicago
Consortium for Stigma Research. February 2002. Online.
http://www.waisman.wisc.edu/EVENTS/ethics/Corrigan_Stigma_WP_2002.pdf This article
focuses on the difficulties the mentally ill have to face. This includes the doubled amount of
struggles they face, such as the actual symptoms and mental illnesses, and the stereotypes and
prejudice they have to overcome.