What to do if someone you know is getting stigmatised...

Stigmatising attitudes are often a result of fear and misinformation. You can achieve a huge amount by learning the truth and sharing accurate information with others.

Stick by your friend. Just being there and being seen to be there is a show of strength that can reduce stigma. Speak to your friend and ask how you can help. Your friend may want you to stand up for him or her in public, or help to fight stigma in other ways.

Things you could do include:

• Lead by example. You can be the person who speaks to someone who seems upset or who stops other people from making jokes at someone’s expense. You don’t have to give away anything your friends have told you in confidence to stop to stigmatising chat about stories in the news, or comments about a person’s behaviour.
• Try to 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 just as much as joking about more familiar issues hurts you.
• Read about people's experiences of stigma, and if you want to, even tell us about your own stigma experiences. Tell us about how you are fighting stigma and why it is important to you.
• 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.
• 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!
• 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.