Behavioral Health: The Stigma of Reaching Out

This article is for all “Mental Health Specialists” and the helping professions, to reach out to potential clients who are experiencing resistance in getting Behavioral Health Services. The term Mental Health (the term being changed with the focus maintaining on the positive) remains resonate with stigmatism because it still implies that there is something wrong with you “mentally” . Whether it be Psychologically or Cognitively, it implies that your brain, your mind, your thinking is “wrong”; just as it did when we used to say “Mental Illness” Then we began using the term “Emotional Health” . At the present time, we say Behavioral Health.

If someone is physically sick, it does not imply blame, unless you are a smoker but that is another story for a different article. However, when someone encounters the terms Mental Health, Mental Illness, Emotional Health, Emotional (implied) Illness, there is something uncommonly wrong. You have opened yourself up to an entire area of dark forces and are not capable to make your own decisions.

As therapists, we know this is not true. But, for the general public, the damage done throughout years of history causes many people to avoid seeking help. If and when they do seek help, they may be at their worst point in the process of emotional instability and may have symptoms that are more out of control then they would have been, they may be less inclined to seek help without some sort of mandate or they may be suffering from a tragedy that could have been avoided if they had sought help in the beginning.

People are afraid for a variety of reasons and history tells us that there was call for these fears. Look at our history. We, as a society, hung people for having different beliefs. We burned people who were accused of being witches. We put people in “snake pits” and detained them from ever seeing society again. We abused people in facilities. We forced people to have electric shocks and lobotomies. We put children away for being deaf; mistakenly identified as mentally impaired. We have put people away for long term and irreversible depression that actually had thyroid disease. We have labeled children in schools as special education (for problems that in many cases, were not due to cognitive delay) and aside from the fact, that they were never able to obtain a full academic and social education, those labels stayed with them throughout their lives.

We, as a society are not that far away from those practices. In 1972, Geraldo Rivera broke up the horrendous situations going on in a State facility in Staten Island by bringing it to Public attention. That was less than 50 years ago. I remember watching it on Black and White Television (and even with the snow) it was appalling. However, we, as a Profession, must maintain accountability to continue to follow the laws that have been put into place to maintain people’s rights; regardless of age, gender, religion, culture , socioeconomic status and color.

Currently, there are many people who are still afraid of what is happening to them and their own inability to control their lives much less let an outsider know what is happening. This is not to mention, that right now, in current times, people who have either social standing or dominant figures in the family, are able to get people “committed” against their will. We have parents who have their children declared as special needs so they can collect funding. We have abuse in some facilities and we most certainly have neglect. We have people who are working within the helping professions who abuse their power for personal gain. I have encountered it. I am sure you have as well.

We still have a historical Pandemic going on and we face Political pressures that are unprecedented. People are deathly afraid of getting sick; potentially dying. People have lost loved ones to the virus; people are suffering economic loss. People who had issues with coping before are now being triggered by the state of the world and yet, the experience has been politicized. We, as Behavioral Health specialists, must reach out.

Written By: Dawn M. E. Picone, Psy.D, LCSWR, BCTMH, QCS

Dr Picone is a Board Certified Telemental Health Provider, Psychologist and Licensed Clinical Social Worker. Now, practicing exclusively online, Dr Picone states that she has been working with Covid 19 survivors, clients who have lost family members to Covid 19 as well as the associated anxiety of what’s happening in our world since the Pandemic started.