Volume 8 • 2021 • Issue 6

Mental Health: Cultural and Ethnic Stigmas How culture and ethnic backgrounds affect mental illness A person’s ethnic and cultural background shapes their beliefs, norms, and values. So it is likely to affect the way they view and treat mental illness. Addressing mental health can be difficult for people of certain backgrounds as it requires talking about things that often go unsaid in their community. In these environments, unusual behaviour is interpreted in various ways and can be viewed as a stigma. Often these perceptions are based on cultural beliefs and ways of understanding mental illness. These attitudes are often not talked about and can exist within groups without anyone openly acknowledging them. The prevalence of mental illness is similar across all cultures. However, it is noteworthy that there are significant differences in the expression of mental health issues between cultural and ethnic groups regarding: • Rates of suicide, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or domestic violence. • “Culture-bound” syndromes or “folk illnesses”— meaning diseases or conditions that are only recognized within a specific cultural or society (e.g., specific sleep disorders and suppressed-anger syndrome). • A prevalence of specific types of mental illness type such as depression for some groups or phobias in others, for example. Mental illness is of such significant concern that the World Health Organization (WHO) has implemented a global Special Initiative for Mental Health. While mental health conditions are on the rise, research indicates that most people who have mental health problems still do not seek help. The reasons for this are numerous, but one of the main factors is stigma. Stigma is defined as a mark of disgrace and can make people feel alienated and discriminated against both within their own cultural group and in wider society. Cultural and ethnic mental health stigmas can affect people dramatically. 39 Issue 6 | 2021 |