Overcoming Mental Disorder Stigma: A Short Analysis of Patient Memoirs

There is controversy concerning the relationship between stigma and the conceptualization of mental illness as a biomedical disease. Proponents of the biomedical model argue that conceptualizing mental illness as a biochemical disease benefits patients, because it not only enables them to receive medical treatments but also helps them avoid the stigmas associated with mental illness. Opposing this position, others suggest that biomedical causal trajectory further contributes to stigma. When considering individuals' sense of well‐being while living with a mental illness, we believe that this debate detracts us from the most important aspects of removing stigma and enabling patients to develop fulfilling lives. Thus, using patient memoirs, we refocus attention on the patient experience itself, searching for how patients' memoirs can illustrate roads to recovery, resilience, and coping. We examine first what facilitates patients to live a fulfilling life and next, what obstacles they identify to a fulfilling life in the face of their encounter with mental illness.