What You Can Do If You Are Facing Stigma

Being on the receiving end of stigma is tough. It hurts. You may be upset; you may be angry and lash out. You may feel like taking a stand, and challenging stigma when you feel strong enough.

If you want to fight stigma, there are lots of things you can do:

• Read about people's experiences of stigma, and if you want to, even tell us about your own stigma experiences. Getting the message out, even anonymously, can help you feel like you are being taken seriously and that you are doing something to fight stigma.
• Download 'see me' campaign materials, put them up in places you go, in your school or college, or even at your doctor’s surgery or local shop. Tell us where you’ve put them or send us photos.
• Get information about stigma, mental health and wellbeing , and mental health problems, and use it in school or other projects. You might want to use stigma as a theme for art, music, drama or written work on bullying, discrimination, human rights or citizenship.
• You can be a good friend … mental health problems are pretty common so the chances are one of your friends has had some problems, or might in the future.
• Challenge stigma in other areas, and make a difference… watch out for things in the paper, in daily life or on the TV. If you see things that upset or anger you, tell us, and take part in our Stigma Stop Watch network of people spotting and fighting stigma all over the country.
• Try and avoid using stigmatising language yourself, or giving other people encouragement by taking part in pranks or laughing at stigmatising jokes. Joking about someone else’s mental ill health can hurt someone just as much as joking about more familiar issues hurts you.
• Arrange activities in your school or youth club, think of ways to tell people it’s wrong to be stigmatising and tell us about them… we may even be able to help you out! If you are covering bullying at school, or in other clubs, look at stigma…it is a form of bullying that can be tackled with others.