As someone who speaks candidly about the stigma of mental illness, I have somehow never mentioned men who suffer from undiagnosed, untreated depression. For reasons that we can all speculate about individually, men are less likely to label their negative affect and thoughts as depression and are more likely to resort to alcohol or drugs, violence, gambling and even womanizing in order to combat their feelings of mental discomfort. As I spoke of last week, nearly half the population view mental illness as some sort of personal weakness. I would wager that when discussing men and depression that this number is quite fitting. It goes against everything a man is stereotypically supposed to represent: strong, silent, in control, powerful and commanding. The website www.mensdepression.org has a mandate of alleviating the stigma surrounding male depression which they place into two groups: overt and covert depression.

I came across this survey from 5 years ago that nearly knocked me right off my chair. “In a 2008 survey conducted on behalf of the Canadian Medical Association, nearly half (46 per cent) of those polled believed that mental illness isn’t always “real” but rather an excuse for poor behaviour and personal failings.”

Imagine your 15 year old son or daughter is diagnosed with muscular sclerosis, cystic fibrosis or even cancer. Likely, your friends, family and community would drop everything to be by your side. But if your child is diagnosed with schizophrenia, they might not appear until the funeral.

I often catch myself sitting back and thinking what the world could look like if mental health stigma was a thing of the past and mental health care was a right and not a privilege. I don’t know if I will live long enough to see any of these dreams materialize, but it doesn’t hurt to have an idea of what a mental health utopia may look like.

If you told one of your friends that you had cancer, there is almost no chance that they would respond with ‘oh, it’s probably all in your head.’ But for some reason, that is a common sentiment when it comes to mental illness. Especially the less ‘in-your-face’ ones such as depression and anxiety.

There are a lot of reasons that I chose to get into the field of addiction treatment, and my beliefs in the danger of AA's addiction recovery program (and others modeled on it) was the main reason. Why do organizations such as Alcoholics Anonymous retain such a glorious public perception, all the while having success rates of approximately 5 per cent after one year? Even AA's own Comments on A.A.'S Triennial Surveys, which is difficult to find, and even more difficult to decipher, does in fact state these dismal results.1

Did you see that crazy guy on the sidewalk? Hear about that nutcase at the party last night? We hear things like this all the time and rarely pay attention to them. After all, we’ve always been told that sticks and stones can break our bones, but names can never hurt us. Although it’s a nice thing to tell yourself when you’re a kid being bullied, the truth is that words hurt. And words that describe mental illness in such broad, often sensationalistic manner do a great deal of harm.

I was a depressed teen. Well, that's sort of putting it lightly. I had thoughts of suicide from a very young age and much of my time in high school was spent either contemplating suicide, or experimenting with the slow suicide of dangerous drugs.

By now, I would hope that you all have heard about the Stand Up for Mental Health campaign that is running here on HealthyPlace.  But, what do we really mean when we say ‘stand up’ and what can you do today to make this project a success?

When I wrote the article ‘Eliminating the Word Schizophrenic’ I stated that schizophrenia was the most stigmatized of all the mental illnesses. Somehow, I forgot to consider dementia as the stigma that it bears runs much deeper than schizophrenia, bipolar disorder and depression combined.