Introduction
From stigma to ignorance, prejudice and discrimination
-
The problem of knowledge: Ignorance
-
The problem of attitudes: Prejudice
-
The problem of behaviour: Discrimination
Ignorance
Prejudice
Discrimination
Action to support people with mental illness
-
Promoting participation in formulating care plans and crisis plans for people with mental illness.
-
Providing cognitive-behavioural therapy for people with mental illness to reverse negative self-stigma.
-
Running regular assessments of consumer satisfaction with services.
-
Creating user-led and user-run services.
-
Developing peer-support worker roles in mainstream mental health care.
-
Encouraging employers to give positive credit for experience of mental illness
-
Enabling people with mental illness to take part in treatment and service evaluation and research.
Action to support people with mental illness at work
-
Having a quieter work place with fewer distractions for people with concentration problems, rather than, for example, a noisy open plan office, as well as a rest area for breaks.
-
Giving more or more frequent supervision than usual to give feedback and guidance on job performance.
-
Allowing a person to use headphones to block out distracting noise.
-
Creating flexibility in work hours so that they can attend their healthcare appointments or work when not impaired by medication.
-
Funding an external job coach for counselling and support and to mediate between employee and employer.
-
Providing a buddy/mentor scheme to provide on-site orientation and assistance.
-
Writing clear personal specifications, job descriptions and task assignments to assist people who find ambiguity or uncertainty hard to cope with.
-
Making contract modifications to specifically allow whatever sickness leave is required by people likely to become unwell for prolonged periods.
-
Providing a more gradual induction phase, for example with more time to complete tasks, for those who return to work after a prolonged absence or who may have some cognitive impairment.
-
Improving disability awareness in the workplace to reduce stigma and to underpin all other accommodations.
-
Reallocating marginal job functions that are disturbing to an individual.
-
Allowing use of accrued paid and unpaid leave for periods of illness.
-
Employers' federations need to inform employers of their legal obligations under existing disability laws regarding people with mental illness.
-
Employers in the health and social care sector, when recruiting, need to make explicit that a history of mental illness is a valuable attribute for many roles.
-
Mental health services need to work with employers and business confederations to ensure that reasonable accommodations and adjustments in the workplace are made for people with mental illness.
-
The education, health and police authorities need to provide well evaluated interventions to increase integration with, and understanding of, people with mental illness to targeted groups such as schoolchildren, police and healthcare staff.
-
Professional training and accreditation organisations need to ensure that mental health practitioners are fully aware of the actual recovery rates for mental illnesses.
Actions needed at the local level
Action | By |
---|---|
• Introduction supported work schemes | • Mental health services with specialist independent sector provider |
• Psychological treatments to improve cognition, self-esteem and confidence | • Mental health and general health service |
• Health and social care explicitly give credit to applicants with a history of mental illness when hiring staff | • Health and social care agencies |
• Provision of reasonable adjustments/accommodations at work | • Mental health providers engaging with employers and business confederation |
• Inform employers of their legal obligations under disability laws | • Employers' confederation |
• Deliver and evaluate the widespread implementation of targeted interventions with targeted groups, including school children, police and healthcare staff | • Education, police and health commissioning and provider authorities |
• Provide accurate data on mental illness recovery rates to mental health practitioners | • Professional training and accreditation organisations |
• Implementation of measures to support care plans negotiated between staff and consumers | • Mental health provider organisations and consumer groups |
Actions needed at the national level
Action | By |
---|---|
• Use a social model of disability that refers to human rights, social inclusion and citizenship | • Governments and non governmental organisations (NGOs) to change core concepts |
• Apply the anti-discrimination laws to give parity to people with physical and mental disabilities | • Parliament and government |
• Inform all employers of their legal obligations under these laws | • Ministry of Employment or equivalent |
• Interpret anti-discrimination laws in relation to mental illness | • Judiciary and legal profession |
• Establish service user speakers' bureaux to offer content to news stories and features on mental illness | • NGOs and other national level service user groups |
• Provide and evaluate media watch response units to press for balanced coverage | • Statutory funding for NGOs to provide media watch teams |
• Share between countries the experience of disability discrimination acts | • Legislators, lawyers, advocates and consumer groups |
• Understand and implement international legal obligations under binding declarations and covenants | • NGOs to communicate legal obligations of all stakeholders and health and social care inspection agencies to audit how far these obligations are respected in practice |
• Audit compliance with codes of good practice in providing insurance | • Associations of Insurers with Service User organisations and mental health NGOs |
• Providing economic incentives rather than disincentives to disabled people ready to return to work | • Employment Ministries to introduce new and flexible arrangements for disabled people to work with no risk to their income |
• Change laws to allow people with a history of mental illness to serve on juries with a presumption of competence | • Justice ministries to amend the laws relating to jury service |
Action at the international level
-
access to care
-
confidentiality
-
assessments of competence and capacity
-
involuntary treatment
-
consent
-
physical treatments
-
seclusion
-
restraint
-
privacy of communications
-
appeals against detention
-
review procedures for compulsory detention [66]