Stigma

This is a Ted Talk about stigma surrounding mental illness. I think it can also be applied to certain physical chronic illnesses. Stigma stems from a lack of understanding, and can be responsible for insensitive and hurtful responses such as those seen in last weeks video. The end of the talk highlights ideas central to Beautiful Identities, that this is just an illness, and not your whole life.


Do you ever get responses like these; "everyone has bad days", "my cousin had that and she's fine", "you just need to think positive"? How do they make you feel? What to you think ordinary people experiencing illness can do to help reduce stigma and discrimination?