Mental Health Stigma Lives Beyond the Moment of Stigma

I feel as though people like to think about incidents of mental health stigma as little pockets in time, but really, they live beyond the moments they happen. These are not compartmentalized or filed away. We know stigma can have negative impacts on a person, but understanding the depth of those impacts starts with understanding how long that moment of stigma can exist for a person.

Revisiting the Idea of Lasting Effects of Mental Health Stigma

In a way, this idea of how mental health stigma lives beyond the moment is something I'm revisiting. I've explored it to some degree in the past, such as with the post "The Lasting Effects of Mental Health Stigma." In that post, I wrote how I often perceive the struggles with mental health stigma as leading to positives like increased empathy and compassion, and how there are also negatives like how I struggle to feel empathy for those who have stigmatized my mental illnesses in the past.

One of the fascinating things for me over the years of writing this blog is seeing these reoccurring themes manifesting in new and different ways. While my focus for this post on how mental health stigma sticks around beyond the moment isn't quite the same as what I discussed in that other post, they feel like echoes of the same impacts for me. They both stem from the moments where I felt stigmatized for my mental illnesses, and both are realities I deal with to this day because of it.

It's like a continued learning experience of just how deeply mental health stigma can run and how it can crop up again and again in ways I don't expect.

Memories of Mental Health Stigma Still Live with Me

For this post in particular, what I'm exploring is how memories of mental health stigma still live with me and in what instances those memories can surface. I discuss it in the following video, alongside how I feel mental health stigma lasts for both the person who was stigmatized as well as the person who did or said the stigmatizing thing.

For me, discussing these things side-by-side really demonstrates how mental health stigma lives with us beyond the moment the stigma initially took place and how deeply it can run. I'd love for you to take a few minutes to watch and share your thoughts.