Sign up for alerts

Spring 2010 | Vol 13 No 3

A view from CAMH

Dr. Kwame McKenzie

Discussions have moved away from investigating what to do about how the public thinks about mental illness and addiction towards changing what people do. Discrimination is now considered by many to be the most important target for change. This has echoes of the position of the black civil rights movement: “You do not have to live next to me, just give me my equality.” The reasoning is that it is difficult to change people’s minds, and you may not know if you have, but you can change people’s actions, and measure and enforce them. Actions are important. They lead to the ubiquitous impact of discrimination, from the level of services funding right through to the way people with lived experience are treated.

Where it gets murky is whether it is possible to change self-stigma – the negative images that people with mental illness and addiction have of themselves – without changing people’s attitudes to mental illness and addiction.

CAMH has a long history of working on stigma. A simple search of the CAMH web site produces more than 600 hits. Many people consider the launch of the CAMH Foundation’s anti-stigma campaign, “Transforming Lives,” which includes people from all walks of life, to have been an important turning point in the social discourse about mental illness and addiction in Ontario.

Now CAMH can add its voice to that of a national body. The Mental Health Commission of Canada has launched its national anti-stigma campaign, Opening Minds, which you can read about in this issue. The campaign is documenting what is happening across Canada and will evaluate promising practices.

As a doctor who on a regular basis has to battle with other doctors to get equitable care for the physical illnesses that my patients experience, I applaud the campaign for making health care providers one of its first two target audiences. I also welcome the challenge to health care providers that this issue of CrossCurrents provides.

Kwame McKenzie, MD, MRCPSYCH (UK)
Executive Editor, CrossCurrents;
Senior Scientist, Social Equity and Health Research Section, CAMH;
Deputy Director, Schizophrenia Program, CAMH;
Professor of Psychiatry, University of Toronto