Jo Mueller investigates how parents could hold the key to tackling mental health stigma.<\/i>
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When it comes to attitudes to mental health, things are getting worse. Despite the high-profile campaigns, stigma and discrimination against people with mental health problems seem to be on the rise<\/a>. Part of the reason may be that our campaigns are promoting the wrong<\/a> message<\/a>. The way we often address stigma is to promote the idea that mental health problems are illnesses. <\/i>The rationale is noble. Rather than give the impression that someone is weak or blameworthy<\/a>, isn\u2019t it surely better to say they are sick?<\/p>\n The danger of this is that the idea of something going wrong with people\u2019s brains can be scary and alienating. <\/i>Put this together with the \u20181 in 4<\/a>\u2019 idea – that one in four of us will suffer \u2018mental illness\u2019 at some point – and it can add up to a frightening message: there\u2019s a dangerous disease out there that might strike at us any time.<\/p>\n However, we all have dark moments, and many argue those are on the same spectrum as the emotional distress that attracts \u2018mental health\u2019 diagnoses. As clinical psychologist Anne Cooke said recently<\/a>, \u2018there is no \u201cus and them\u201d, no people who are \u201cnormal\u201d and people who are \u201cmentally ill\u201d. We\u2019re all in this together.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n Just as important as the message though, is the question of whether the wide-focus approach of anti-stigma campaigns (posters on the tube, etc.) is the most effective way to go about things. So what messages should we be giving and who are the most important groups to reach?<\/p>\n A study<\/a> that I and some colleagues have recently published investigated both the message and the people who receive it. In particular, we looked at the importance of communication during key stages of children\u2019s development and we considered how parents talk to their primary-school-aged children about mental health.<\/p>\n Our central finding was that, while parents were happy and open when chatting to their children about mental wellbeing<\/i>, the exact opposite was true when communicating about mental illness<\/i>. The more parents thought of a particular issue as being about mental illness, the more they conceptualised it as happening to other people and the less they talked to their child about it. Even when asked directly, parents tended to avoid the subject. Comments often inadvertently reinforced the us and them distinction: \u2018He\u2019s met a girl who is bipolar but I don’t think he realised\u2026 they look like you and me.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n Interestingly, the parents in the study all said that they wanted to be open and honest with children about mental health problems. The mismatch with what they actually did led to some interesting contradictions. For example, parents believed that their children were understanding and accepting of mental illness. However, they also talked about children\u2019s lack of understanding and the probability of them being upset as reasons to avoid talking about it. Most poignantly, these confusions were even true of parents who had themselves experienced mental health problems:<\/p>\n \u2018I don’t think you put your head in the sand and pretend it\u2019s not there\u2026 I got post-natal depression\u2026 and Daisy [name changed] went through that. Now, I\u2019ve never told her I had depression.\u2019<\/i><\/p>\n The way parents talked to their children was powerfully influenced by the way that their own parents had talked to them. Often people wanted to be more open than their own parents had been, but didn\u2019t manage it. I wonder if this affects many families. There was a sobering moment halfway through the research when I realised that this issue had been a part of my own childhood. I remember half-explanations, pointed looks, and sad voices when people mentioned a beloved family member who had died before I was born. Much later on, I discovered that they had died by suicide, following a period of intense mental distress. When I plucked up the courage to broach this with my family, I found that my parents hadn\u2019t talked to me about it partly because they felt they hadn\u2019t really understood what had gone on. They put this down to silence on the subject on the part of their own parents. Taboo and lack of understanding had passed down through the generations.<\/p>\n Why is it important to know what messages parents are giving to their children? Our study shows that between the ages of 7 and 11 children receive messages from their parents that divide the world into us and them. This is exactly the age when children\u2019s brains begin to develop the ability to understand mental health issues. It\u2019s also the age<\/a>\u00a0when prejudice towards people with mental health problems begins. Our research suggests that parents\u2019 messages are contributing to the development of stigmatising attitudes. It also suggests that unconscious intergenerational patterns of parenting might lead to the persistence of these messages, despite wishing for something different. This process could undermine any beneficial impact of programmes such as Time to Change<\/a>, targeting as they do explicit opinions and knowledge. It\u2019s clear that these don\u2019t <\/i>translate into changed messages to children nearly as easily as we might think.<\/p>\n So what could we do differently if explicit messages reinforcing difference are not the best way? Here are a few suggestions:<\/p>\n\n
About the author<\/h3>\n