Subtitle: Mental Health Consumers Confront Stigma
Author: Otto F. Wahl, Ph.D.
Foreword by: Laura Lee Hall, Director of Research, NAMI
Subject: Psychology & Psychiatry
Cloth ISBN 0-8135-2724-4
Pages: 256 pp.
Description: An examination of how people with mental illness view their stigmatized role in society
"Dr. Wahl's book gives those who suffer from mental illnesses an eloquent voice. Through their own words, consumers allow us a glimpse of life as they know it, struggling to overcome devastating diseases while withstanding the misconceptions, isolation, and discrimination-the stigma-that society imposes upon them."-Rosalynn Carter, former First Lady and head of the Carter Center Mental Health Program
"These revelations by psychiatric survivors should shatter stereotypes forever. Otto Wahl's book is must-reading for policy makers, media professionals, and all informed Americans."-Jean Arnold, National Stigma Clearinghouse
Individuals with mental illnesses-such as schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and depression-have a double burden, Otto Wahl writes. Not only must they cope with disabling disorders, but they also must contend with the negative attitudes of the public toward those disorders. To truly understand the full extent of this stigma, we need to hear from the consumers (the term used in this book for people with mental illnesses) themselves. Telling Is Risky Business is the first book to examine what these people have to say about their own experiences of stigma.
The center of Wahl's research was a nationwide survey in which mental health consumers across the United States were asked, both through questionnaires and interviews, to tell about their experiences of stigma and discrimination. The research comes to life as many of the over 1,300 respondents offer perceptive observations, in their own words, of how our society treats people with mental illness. As Laura Lee Hall writes in the Foreword, "[This book] presents the voices of people who have mounted the struggle and hopefully will lead you to the belief that we cannot as a people tolerate further cruelty and discrimination against these, our sons and daughters, brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, neighbors, and fellow citizens."
Otto F. Wahl is a professor of psychology at George Mason University. He is the author of Media Madness: Public Images of Mental Illness (Rutgers University Press), which received the 1996 Gustavus Myers Award as an Outstanding Book on Human Rights in North America.
