My central question is What are the effects of stigma against mental illness?
The first step to my research is answering the question of: Do people with mental illness process information differently? This will help me to address my question because it also ties into the way people with mental illness process stigma and discrimination.
The second step to my research is answering the question of: Why is there a stigma against men’s mental health? This will help me to address my question because it helps me explore different groups that experience mental illness.
The third step to my research is answering the question of: How does stigma against mental health affect our education system? As a student, I am very curious as to how it affects our education system. This will help me to address my question because it dives into how mental health stigma manifests into our systems.
“1 in 3 Canadians (about 9.1 million people) will be affected by a mental illness during their lifetime.” That is about 23% percent of the current Canadian population, which also includes individuals in my community. This question affects my community as it is found that there is a larger stigma against mental illness, so there is a larger chance that out of those 1 in 3 Canadians, a lot of them will be face stigma and discrimination.
- https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1489832/
- https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/October-2021/Discrimination-in-Academia
- https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-can-we-reduce-mens-mental-health-stigma#The-stigma-men-face
- https://qbi.uq.edu.au/blog/2020/10/how-do-mental-disorders-impact-our-decision-making
- https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/stigma-and-discrimination
Hello Aleah,
Nice post! First, I think your subquestions had relations to your overarching question, but I would switch a couple of things. For your first question, “Do people with mental illness process information differently?”, you explained that it “ties into” the way people with mental illnesses process stigma. I think anything related to mental illness can “tie into” the project, but the problem is it needs to be specific. I see where you were going with the question so try rephrasing. Instead, maybe, “how does stigma against mental health affect people with mental illness?”. Second, I like where you are going with the second question although, I would include more circumstances. So far you have how the stigma affects males, which is a great start, but have you thought about how stigma against mental health affects different cultures? You can specifically look into places that do not openly talk about mental health, like Russia or Japan, and compare the effects.
Here are some resources that may help
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4948168/
https://www.un.org/africarenewal/magazine/december-2016-march-2017/mental-illness-invisible-devastating
https://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Mental-health/Mental-health-index
Good luck!
Shieva Mokhtarnameh